Blahblahpoliticalcakes...
So of course a huge number of the Dem blogs out there are simultaneously scratching their heads, wondering if McCain truly is senile after all, and rejoicing about how McCain’s VP means he’s all but handed the election to Obama. Some Republican blogs are cheering how this has energized/will energize the conservative voting base.
I come somewhere in the middle of this; I’m nothing if not cynical when it comes to politics, especially liberal/Democratic. I’m still grumbling and bruised from ’00 and ’04, when I thought there was no way the country could re-elect Bush. And the high I got from the ’06 mid-terms was very short-lived when the new "Democratic" Congress basically... bent over and let an extremely unpopular lame-duck President gleefully kick them around like toys.
While I've tried not too be too bashy or gushy for either side with the following ramble, my political leanings are no secret, so - consider yourself warned. It is rather long, because this is the ONLY post I intend to make on this matter.
My short, blunt opinion, as a single middle-class (or impoverished, if middle-class actually means making $5 million a year) woman: I don't care about Palin's gender. It had zip to do with Hillary's qualifications as a candidate, it didn't make Nancy Pelosi a more effective Speaker, and it didn't make Ferraro an asset to Mondale. I don't care if she's more "relatable." If I want someone I can sit down and have daiquiris with while painting our toenails, that's what friends are for. It's NOT the primary quality I look for in someone I'm choosing to run this country. (The "elitist" argument against Obama has always been bizarre to me - isn't simply running for President a form of elitism in itself? Believing YOU are the absolute best person to govern a nation?)
Every liberal blog from HuffPo to DailyKos has enumerated the ways in which Palin seems to invalidate many of the GOP criticisms of Obama - especially “inexperience.” If your dominant argument against your opponent is that 12 years as a state/US Senator isn't sufficient Presidential experience? Then choosing someone who has even fewer credentials to be within a 72-year-old former melanoma patient's heartbeat of being the Most Powerful Person In The Free World certainly doesn't back up that reasoning. Her biggest experience is 18 months as a dwindling-in-popularity governor of a state whose population is about equivalent to the city I live in. Obama represented a comparable number of people when he was in the Illinois Senate, and even more in the US Senate.
She certainly wasn't chosen as a "swing state" magnet. Alaska has 3 electoral college votes, and will go to McCain in November no matter what. She also has ties to Idaho - 4 electoral votes, and also not a state that has any chance of going to Obama. So you can’t really argue that she could help bring a “key battleground state” to McCain.
Alaska may not have a lot of electoral votes, but there is one valuable commodity it has quite a lot of: oil. It didn’t escape my notice that Alaska holds some 20% of the nation’s oil reserves - and is the location of ANWR, which Palin desperately wants to drill. Smooth, really: McCain can make the noises about not wanting to drill ANWR, which could help his standing with left-leaning independents, but with Palin as his VP, he may get that anyway. Palin’s husband was also a six-figure-earning executive for BP. Even my sister's McCain-leaning roommate, when my sister told him where she was from, immediately went "Oil."
Looking more at the online reactions, the choice does make sense strategically - as far as getting McCain elected.
Palin’s young, she’s a woman, she’s a conservative fundamentalist Christian, she's a "working-class" mom - all blocs of GOP voters McCain needs to win but hasn't been able to really lock down so far, and a lot of conservatives out there seem to love Palin. She has some history of "reforming" Republican politics in notoriously corrupt Alaskan government, which can bolster his own reformer/maverick/outsider creds. And picking a woman makes him appear progressive, which no doubt is intended to sway some crucial independents... and maybe disaffected Hillary voters.
I said I don't care about Palin's gender. However, I do care about what I think her gender is being used for here - which is why, much as I want to, I can't be happy about her historical status as the first woman on a GOP presidential ticket.
When someone in my largely conservative office mentioned McCain had chosen Palin, a couple of others immediately declared what a help this would be to McCain - because she's a woman. Period. They were impressed he chose a woman; they didn't know anything else about her. Which depresses me - both the assumption that so many women voters out there want two X chromosomes in a Prez so much that they won't actually care about the woman's positions... and that her being a woman is apparently the most remarkable thing about her choice.
There were plenty of far more experienced conservative female GOP politicians out who could have truly complemented/supplemented McCain's governing abilities - which makes me think McCain didn't want someone for that purpose at all. This nomination looks less to me about what Palin can bring to the White House - and more about who she can bring to McCain. Be it swing voters, or Big Oil, or both.
Which makes me feel bad for her, whatever I think of her politics. From what I've read, she seems nice and decent enough; my heart goes out to any family raising a disabled child. It makes my stomach turn at a woman's gender being a tool to seal the necessary alliances and shiny dowry for a man to win a high office... hadn't we moved past that? On the other hand, she did accept the nomination. I'm also kind of nauseated at her invoking Hillary's "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling: regardless of what one thinks of her politics, Hillary still waged a devoted, lengthy, fierce campaign, which got her closer to the presidency than any woman in history. By comparison, Palin simply got "lucky." Maybe the fact that she "stumbled" into high political spotlight makes her more appealing to some - but it sure as hell doesn't mean she'll be a better leader. Just as ambition itself is not always a bad thing, lack thereof is not always a good thing.
Maybe this pick will energize Hillary/the Clintons into campaigning even more passionately for Obama, and strategically there are worse political allies for a Democrat to have. The only thing Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have in common is that they're women: politically, they're not interchangeable at all, and I hope the Obama campaign, and the Clintons especially, make that very clear to anyone who's considering voting for McCain/Palin simply because there's a woman on the ticket. Anyone who genuinely champions the causes Hillary herself championed - voting for Palin won't do a damn thing to help those causes.
Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE to see a woman in the Oval Office in my lifetime. But, as I said in a long-ago rant about Hillary voters, I want it to be because she's the most qualified choice available. (Again, there were far more qualified women out there for McCain to choose.) I don't want it to be because she was handpicked by a guy who's trying to shore up my vote. That's not progress. That's pandering. And frankly, given what I've seen of Palin's political stances, I'm not all that convinced she'd be "good" for women anyway - assuming she'd have any real influence in a McCain administration. If McCain's elected, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last we ever really hear of her. Of course, after eight years of Dick Cheney, maybe a silent VP wouldn't be that bad.
Can anyone out there honestly say McCain would have even considered a man with Palin's exact qualifications as his running mate? And if Obama had chosen a first-term, tiny-state, woman governor with no other significant political accomplishments as his VP - the same pundits who are praising McCain's "bold" pick would be crowing over how this just further proves Obama's unfit judgment, and that he was pandering to Hillary's voters.
The bulk of the media coverage this election has focused on the Democratic ticket. This was going to be a historical nomination for the Dems regardless of whether Hillary or Obama won it, whereas the GOP was going to nominate the same sort of candidate they always do: an older, affluent white man. Which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing - we've all voted for them - but choosing yet another one as their nominee certainly didn't increase the McCain ticket’s "buzzworthiness.” So I also wonder if the Palin pick is partially to generate “excitement” over McCain’s ticket and steal some of Obama's spotlight: picking not only a young woman, but a young woman who was considered a long shot at best. And sure enough, McCain has succeeded in sending the political world into a tizzy, whereas otherwise it would still be buzzing continuously over Obama's acceptance speech. In the case of sticking a pin in Obama's latest limelight bubble - mission accomplished.
But is any of this a sure lock for McCain's victory? No. There are still those out there who can't sit with the idea of a woman being their potential Commander-in-Chief. Her lack of experience on the national stage makes her a potentially huge PR risk - there's no way to tell how she'd hold up under the stresses and scrutiny of a national campaign/office. The lack of her experience is going to bother some Republicans, especially on the national security front, which is supposed to be a stronghold for the GOP; Palin does absolutely nothing to bolster McCain's creds there. Of course no one out there is hoping John McCain will drop dead (no one I know, anyway) - but his VP choice does further highlight the issue of his age and health, which has already been questioned. With Biden, we'd have some idea of what we were looking forward to if he had to assume the Presidency. With Palin, we'd be walking in blind, which - especially if this were in a wartime situation - doesn't help my nerves any. That's another reason why the "well, with the Dems, the inexperienced guy is at the HEAD of the ticket" excuse doesn't fly for me (the first being that she still has far less experience than Obama) - Biden seems to cover Obama's perceived gaps a lot better than Palin covers McCain's. I'm especially curious to see how she holds herself against Biden in their debate.
It still boggles my mind McCain only met her once before giving her the opportunity for the second-most important job in the world: I had to pass more than one interview before getting MY job, and my job isn't governing half a billion people, representing them to the rest of the world, and being Commander-in-Chief of one of the most powerful militaries in the world.
(If I wanted to be truly snarky, I could add another reason he picked her: job security. If she’s McCain’s second-in-command, who’s going to be in a hurry to assassinate him? As much as Dems/liberals may dislike McCain, do they really want to risk what a sudden Palin presidency might bring?)
I also wonder if a lot of the choice wasn’t induced by voter turnout worry. High voter turnout in presidential elections historically favors Democrats, and the McCain campaign knows this. Thursday night’s Obama speech drew in 75,000, and no doubt would’ve drawn in more if there’d been space. McCain was optimistically hoping for a 5,000 turnout with his last rally, a rally which still had plenty of seats empty. Even in uber-red Oklahoma City, I’ve seen at least 30 Obama bumper stickers out there to one sticker for McCain. In Oklahoma's primary, the voter turnout for Hillary alone, never minding the total Democratic votes cast, well exceeded the total Republican vote count. Which isn’t to say I think Oklahoma will turn blue or even purple in November - I doubt it - but even in Red State Central the Democrats as a whole seemed more passionate and energized about their nominee than the GOP was for theirs.
(And this enthusiasm may be even beyond even the Presidential: I see a lot of signs/bumper stickers for the Democratic challenger for Senator Inhofe's seat... and zero for Inhofe. God, I'm anticipating that election almost as much as the Presidential - if any bastard deserves to be ousted from the Senate, it's Jim Inhofe.)
But as I was saying at the beginning, I'm still not sure this pick is going to drastically hurt McCain - unless Palin makes a huge public ass of herself between now and November. Online and in RL, many of my conservative friends are happy about this pick. And there is a significant part of me that doesn’t think a lot of American voters who go to the polls in November care much about things like Palin's miniscule political background, that it's going to matter less and less the closer we get to November. Their attention's all on the guy at the top of the ticket. My co-worker doesn't care who McCain's Veep is; she's voting for him anyway because - above all else - she can't stand Obama. If this pick does make any of my conservative/GOP friends more enthusiastic about voting for McCain, I'm genuinely glad for them: I'd much rather people be able to cast their vote for someone rather than simply against the other guy. (This will be my first Presidential vote for someone rather than against the other guy, and it's my sister's first Presidential vote, period, and I'm so glad she gets to inaugurate herself into the political process voting for someone she is genuinely enthusiastic about.)
The average American's attention span is also very flighty - myself included. Most would say they don't have the time or interest to devotedly follow a presidential election and its candidates from beginning to end. Even for those who pay a moderate amount of attention to specifics about the candidates, a lot of that flies out of your head the moment you enter the voting booth, when it's suddenly just you, a ballot with two names in big black letters, and a lever/pen. The public has consistently relied largely on soundbites from the media. All most voters will probably know about Palin is that she's a woman, she's from Alaska, she's a conservative Christian Republican, and she's not Bush or Cheney - and that will be enough for them, whichever way they end up voting.
McCain can no longer run the "inexperienced" argument against Obama. But maybe he won't need to.
Then again, maybe I’m misjudging American voters as a whole. This year there certainly seems to be more public interest in the candidates, and particularly on the Democratic side, a lot of people are more actively, enthusiastically joining the political process that haven't before. Most of the delegates at the DNC were first-timers. Maybe more people are paying attention: more people watched Obama's acceptance speech on TV than even the Beijing opening ceremonies (and twice as many as who watched Kerry's acceptance), and the DNC was the most-viewed political convention in history. I'm very curious to see how the RNC compares in attendance and ratings. The sheer number of blogs and discussions out there on Sarah Palin certainly means a number of Internetters are sitting up and digging for more on just who the hell she is, doing the vetting we hope to God McCain also did.
Only November 4 will tell, and once I cast my vote and go home for the evening, I'll be tuned into the constant news with chocolate and fizzy drinks anxiously watching the progress and liveblogging like everyone else. :)