I am not sure what to say. It's that shocking. Senator John McCain has selected Governor Sarah Palin, Republic(an) of Alaska, to be his running mate.
I think I'm shocked! Didn't think he would actually do it! Let's go to the blogs!
Powerline's Paul Mirengoff:
I'm very disappointed that John McCain would put someone as inexperienced and lacking in foreign policy and national security background as Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Andrew Sullivan has a lot of different takes but here is one:
The first criterion for a veep - and I'm simply repeating a truism here - is that they are ready to take over at a moment's notice. That's especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That's more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two terms years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain's pick with Obama's: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.
One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity.
She may be a fine person, but she's my age, she has zero Washington experience, and no foreign policy expertise whatsoever.
McCain has just told us how seriously he takes the war we are in. Not seriously at all.
Ed Morrissey, over at Hot Air, is trying to justify the pick:
Palin has no formal foreign-policy experience, which puts her at a disadvantage to Joe Biden. However, in nineteen months as governor, she certainly has had more practical experience in diplomacy than Biden or Obama have ever seen. She runs the only American state bordered only by two foreign countries, one of which has increasingly grown hostile to the US again, Russia.
And at TPM, Josh Marshall says this:
Next, John McCain's central and best argument in this campaign is that Barack Obama simply lacks the experience to be President of the United States. And now John McCain, who is a cancer survivor who turns 72 years old today, is picking a vice presidential nominee who has been governor of a small state for less than two years and prior to that was mayor of a town with roughly one-twenty-seventh of the citizens that Barack Obama represented when he was a state senator in Illinois.
Whatever you think of Barack Obama's qualifications to be President, Palin is manifestly less qualified. And that undermines the central premise of McCain's campaign.
That last one, in a nutshell, is the biggest problem for McCain. Several conservative blogs are saying that Obama cannot go after Palin's lack of experience without McCain taking advantage of it. There is something that they are not realizing.
He doesn't have to.
The media is, after John McCain spent the last two months saying that he "would choose someone who is ready to be president on day one," going to go after this pick. The conservative bloggers are going to go after this pick. Obama and the left don't have to do one darn thing but sit back and watch.
This would actually be a great pick except for the fact that EVERY time he was asked what he was looking for in a vice-president he said that their ability to become president on day one was critical. That was his litmus test.
Governor Sarah Palin is, at best, as qualified as Barack Obama. Ed Morrissey's justifications aside, she has far fewer national security and foreign policy credentials than Barack Obama. She is light years away from Joe Biden in that category.
He decided, after last night's speech, to try to throw the Hail Mary. I don't think this works for him.
It was he who tried to make experience the defining characteristic of the presidential race. It was he who announced that experience was to be a key characteristic of his vice-presidential selection.
He can now wallow in the mess he has created.
He has captured the news cycle from Obama's speech. I don't know, but I don't think, that that will turn out to be a good thing.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern Sphere: Related Content
