John McCain has certainly revived his maverick label by picking--or plucking from obscurity--freshman Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. (WaPo coverage here, and NYT coverage here.) Like every candidate, there are pluses and minuses with her.
On the plus side, Christian conservatives (as God-o-Meter knows and shows), are going to be delighted. She is a self-described "hockey mom" who is pro-life and a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She is a moose-hunting mother of five, her latest--born just last April--has Down syndrome, and she never considered the option of abortion. She has bucked the scandal-plagued GOP establishment in Alaska, and has shown a mild green streak without really undermining her state's interests in mining and Big Oil. She is against taxes (except, apparently, when it came to building stuff in her own town), and against gay marriage. Check, check, check.
She is a sweetheart, a 44-year-old fresh face who is as far outside the Beltway as you can possibly get without being Russian. And she is so attractive the Obama camp will have to be careful not to look like they're bullying her, or patronizing her.
And those things are also major downsides in the general election. Will someone like Palin really pull in those supposedly disaffected Hillary supporters? Not likely, not after Bill's show-stopping speech.
Moreover, how can the McCain camp work the "inexperienced" wedge against Obama when Sarah Palin will be a heartbeat away from an Oval Office that would be occupied by John McCain, who would be the oldest man ever elected president? She has less than two years as governor, and before that the sum total of her governing experience was as mayor of Wasilla, a town of less than 7,000.
If Obama has been painted as little more than a good-looking Esquire cover guy, how about Palin, a former beauty queen who was runner-up in 1984 as Miss Alaska? Some will think McCain picked his daughter, others his third wife. (What is it with Republicans and beauty pageants, anyway?) Palin is sharper than Dan Quayle, but still...
Imagine the Biden-Palin VP debate. Voters want change, but they also want ballast. And they want someone who can step in. Sure, Palin is a wonderful mom. But she is the mother of FIVE, and the last a special needs infant born just FOUR MONTHS ago. She'll have to have Mary Poppins and a couple Super Nannys with 911 on speed-dial if she hopes to fill the 24/7 job as Vice-President.
Her environmental cred may not stretch too far, either. Check out the dissection by the HuffPost's Chris Kelly of her Polar Bear record and her January NYTimes op-ed in which she said all was well with the big critters. Now that the polar bears are actually swimming across hundreds of miles of open water looking for receding ice floes, you can imagine the video in the camapign ads to come.
And while she has a reputation as a whistle-blower on ethics, she is also under investigation for a firing and other machinations related to penalties against her estranged ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper. Add to that the fact that the dominant Republican Party in Alaska is a cesspool of scandals and indictments, and Palin's odor of sanctity may not endure.
So what does the choice of Palin say to all those "new" evangelicals? Will her fresh face attract them? Or will she come across as the old religious right in a new guise?
Palin could prove to be McCain's salvation, and a necessary gamble given his own weaknesses. (Funny, McCain's people were saying the other day that the choice of Biden pointed up Obama's weaknesses, and did not compensate for them...) But the audacity (nice word) of his choice could also smack of desperation.
My sense is that the positives balance out the negatives, and McCain can't afford a "wash" in terms of gains and losses. Palin will reassure the Religious Right, and surely draw in those voters, especially Christian "soccer moms," who see her as "one of us," only with a hockey stick. But with all voters growing in their suspicion of the use of religion in politics, as shown by the latest Pew poll, Palin's best weapon may be firing blanks.
PS: I wasn't sure, but it's pronounced PAY-lin. We'll all know that soon enough.
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What I mean is that although I consider myself on "The Left", I am certainly not a down-the-line liberal, so I would appreciate if people wouldn't paint me as such.
PhoenixOrion,
No, I read your entire post. First of all, it's "Emelie" not "Emilie" Secondly, you're being 10 when Billary were first elected means you're about 26 years old, so I wish you the best of luck in a long life ahead of you :-)
Third, it's pretty lame of you (sorry to be harsh) to compare Sarah Palin with John Edwards; or to compare her decision to work a full-time job (in politics) while caring for a child (as most working working have to do today) ... with a smooth-talking lawyer and jerk (Edwards) cheating on his ill wife.
Are women with kids (even ones requiring special care) supposed to just stay home all day long? That may be ideal for some, and I don't want to knock those who can afford to do this ... but this is not realistic for most.
Honestly, the more I hear people dumping on Palin for her life choices (especially the hypocrites among the media/Washington elites), the more I'm beginning to like this person. Not only because she's a woman. But also because she's "real" in a way so many of the professional talking heads on TV aren't.
I can appreciate the concerns that some have expressed about Sarah Palin's infant child. The time and pressure involved in running on a presidential ticket can certainly influence family life and real debate on how working families impact on a child's life is a worthy one. But in Sarah Palin's case, the noise is more on her having a "special needs" baby. As a physician who has worked with Down Syndrome (that's what is should be called Down, not Down's- "Down) children and adults, I am confident in telling you that a Down Syndrome baby has essentially the same needs as ANY baby: sleep, food, and waste management. Barring congenital heart or other organ defects (which if severe would not allow the child to survive life outside the womb anyway), Down Syndrome infants have a normal upbringing. As they grow older these children will face more difficulties with language, etc., but there is no one size fits all stamp of Down Syndrome. We still have archaic ideas about what children and adults with Down Syndrome as well other disabilities, can accomplish. This is sad but not surprising. We hardly see them anymore since 90% of fetuses who receive an in-utero diagnosis of Down Syndrome are aborted.
acs: "We still have archaic ideas about what children and adults with Down Syndrome as well as other disabilities, can accomplish ... "
Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful post at 10:18 AM today. I learned a lot from you and thank you for your sharing, as an MD, your knowledge in this area. My uncle is developmentally disabled and I can't help but agree with your general conclusions which I partially excerpted above. Thanks again!!
Reaganite: Thanks for your kind comments. I'm glad my perspective was of some use.
I realized that I neglected to finish my thought on Down's vs. Down Syndrome. Clearly, proofreading is not a forte. I was going to say that it is not appropriate to use the term Down's (or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's) because none of the researchers who first described these syndromes ever had (and thus "owned") the disease in question. Moreover, in many cases more than one researcher contributed to what we know about these syndromes, and hopefully many more researchers will continue to do so. For example, Pierre Lejeune-- a remarkable French physician and geneticist-- pointed to Trisomy 21 as the molecular underpinning of Down Syndrome, nearly a century after the disease gained the eponym it has today!
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