Friday, August 29, 2008

So it’s Palin

Wow. Sarah Palin is John McCain’s pick for the vice-presidential nominee. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this.

First, the positive: I respect Governor Palin. She is the closest thing to a Republican the GOP has right now. She has a firm sense of ethics, is fiduciarily responsible, is strongly anti-corruption, and has shown signs of even-handedness and bipartisanship.

But there are some serious downsides. She only seems to partially understand climate-change issues, she belongs to a right-wing group that believes that a fertilized egg deserves the same status as an infant, she opposes legislation to allow same-sex marriage, she believes that creationism has a place in schools, and she has less than four years holding a state elective office.

She started off on the city council of Wasilla, Alaska in 1992. Four years later, citing wasteful spending and unnecessarily high taxes, she challenged the mayor of Wasilla, and won. Six years after that, she failed to make the primary for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. The following year, she was appointed to the post of Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but resigned in 2004 protesting the lack of ethics among the state’s GOP leaders. She went on to publicly expose the crooked dealings of the state GOP chairman and the state attorney general, both of whom resigned. In 2006, she ran for governor. Stomping the incumbent Frank Murkowski during the primary, she was shown little support from the GOP and outspent by her Democratic opponent, but won anyway.

During her first term, she pushed for an ethics bill, killed pork-barrel legislation (including the “Bridge to Nowhere” project), worked to unseat Representative Don Young (the originator of the bridge project), and called on the astonishingly corrupt Senator Ted Stevens to explain his financial malfeasance with VECO.

She’s also helped pass legislation increasing taxes on oil companies in Alaska, has had no problems firing questionable state employees or rescinding appointments made by the former governor. She even had the state’s business jet sold off.

It’s hard not to like all that.

But here’s the thing: John McCain is 72 years old. Reagan was only 69 when he assumed the presidency; by the end of it, it is possible that he was beginning to show the signs of the Alzheimer’s that would eventually claim his life. McCain is in good health for his age, but there is a strong possibility that stress would take its toll. Then what?

We get a young VP assuming the presidency—one with far, far less foreign-policy experience than Barack Obama.

It’s hard not to see this as a cynical grab for the disaffected Clinton voters. There are a lot of them, and a good vocal bunch of them are talking about voting for McCain. I really don’t understand this level of petty bitterness, but it’s their stupid choice to make. Unfortunately, this could actually cost the Democrats the election—if enough disaffected Clinton voters really prefer to see a woman in the executive branch more than they would prefer to see anything even remotely like the platform Clinton was supporting, that’s going to shove a few percentage points over the aisle on what is turning into a fairly close race.

Still, from a purely political point, it’s a smart move on the McCain campaign’s part.

I hope it doesn’t work. I’d prefer to see a more open-minded woman on the ballot; if one comes along, with a similar sense of ethics, I’d vote for her.