The problems with Palin

Obviously I've been as energized by McCain's Palin pick as have many other conservatives, hence my logorrheic blogging about it. I must say, though, that I have concerns. May as well get them out here:

1. Her lack of experience. Hardly anything more needs to be said about this, given the commentary in the days since her pick. This is very much a non-trivial problem. It doesn't worry me as much as it does others because we are voting for the top of the ticket, not the No. 2. And experience is no guarantee of performance in office. Dick Cheney was very experienced. All things considered, I'd rather have an experienced VP than not. But it's not a deal breaker here.

2. The Eagleton factor. There's so much we just don't know about Sarah Palin. I fear that something's going to come out of the blue and make McCain's audacity look devastatingly reckless.

3. Can she really govern? David Brooks speaks to this issue in his column today. Excerpt:

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain's primary weakness -- that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems -- the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety -- are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

4. Does she bring enough to the ticket to compensate for McCain's weakness in foreign policy? I think relatively few conservatives have this problem, but I do. I'm with Noah Millman:

I said before that I'm still undecided in this election. Foreign policy looms exceptionally large for me this time, and so far while I find Obama disappointing I find McCain genuinely alarming. Whether deep inside him he still harbors the "old McCain" who opposed the Lebanon intervention, supported the Powell Doctrine, and led the way on normalization with Vietnam, as a candidate McCain clearly wants to run on the permanent emergency, with a subtext that only a real American can be trusted to defend America, and real Americans can be identified by their reflex hawkishness in all circumstances. A campaign of that character would have to be defeated, for the good of the country. And, as noted, Palin makes it somewhat harder to run such a campaign. He can still say that you can only trust 100% real American Americans in a time of peril, a pitch aimed right at the gut that I expect him to keep making, and Obama just has to deal with it 'cause politics ain't beanbag. But he would have done that no matter who he picked. If the plausibility of the "existential peril" pitch is lower with Palin at his side than with any other choice, that's a good thing in my book.

I don't think Palin will be in any way a countervailing force on McCain regarding foreign policy. Then again, I don't know who would, period, given how strongly he feels about foreign policy. She'd be good on domestic policy, I'm guessing, and be an avatar for the kind of next-generation conservatism that I'm interested in. As jazzed as I am about this pick, I am not settled yet on whether Palin's strengths make it worth holding my nose and voting for McCain (as opposed to not voting in the presidential race).