Sarah Palin: Analyzing McCain's Choice for VP

Things are certainly getting interesting!

First the young Obama picks old-guard Joe Biden, with foreign policy experience and working-class appeal. And then just one day after Obama accepts the nomination, McCain taps Sarah Palin–with just two years experience as governor of a very sparsely populated state. Before that, she was mayor of the small Anchorage suburb where she lives, population just 6500.

Add to that the weird economy of Alaska, where oil revenues are actually partially socialized: yes, the same sort of direct-to-the-people benefit for which McCain and Bush criticize Hugo Chavez. In 2007, every person who had lived in Alaska at least a year got $1654 from the oil fund; the amount varies from year to year, but the wealth redistribution program has been paying out since 1982.

In short, it’s hard to see the relevance of managing Alaska, with its hefty oil surplus and sparse population of 670,053 (about the size of in-city-limits Boston or Washington) spread out over an area more than twice the size of Texas to potentially being president of the United States of America.

My 15-year-old son commented, “There goes the argument about more experience!”

And he hadn’t seen the AP story, which noted,

She has more experience catching fish than dealing with foreign policy or national affairs.

Palin, born in 1964, is younger than Obama; McCain, at 72, is older than Biden. She’s a former beauty queen who last year posed for Vogue. She likes guns, mooseburgers, and attacking corruption, and she has a history of taking on–and beating–much more seasoned politicians.

On the one hand, picking a woman could make significant inroads among the former Hillary voters, despite Hillary’s strong and enthusiastic endorsement of Obama at the DNC. However, any Hillary supporter who looks at policy is not going to like the anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-family, pro-big-money positions of McCain and the Republicans, so I doubt that gambit will be successful–except for those who want a woman, and don’t care about anything else. And they sure didn’t do much for Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984.

On the other hand, I get the impression that perhaps McCain picked someone he sees as weak enough on foreign policy to not give him any guff. If he’d wanted a policy wonk, he could have chosen Condi Rice–though I could see at least three reasons why he wouldn’t go there: too tied to the Bush administration, loses him whatever racist backlash vote there might be against Obama (yes, I’m cynical enough to go there), and has said she doesn’t want the job.

And if I can grow a third hand for a moment: Palin may not be all that easy to push around. She seems to prize her independence. In fact, she’s far more of a “maverick” than McCain has been lately. Obama pointed out last night just how often McCain has voted with Bush.

If McCain were elected and served two full terms, he’d be 80. Many, many leaders have died before that age, so the prospect of Palin assuming the presidency needs to be looked at closely. she’s got spunk–but her experience is very limited.

UPDATE: About an hour after I posted this, I received this blistering criticism of the nomination from Defenders of Wildlife–definitely not encouraging:

F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L E A S E
A u g u s t 2 9 , 2 0 0 8
Shocking Choice by John McCain

WASHINGTON– Senator John McCain just announced his choice for running mate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. To follow is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.

“Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP (formerly British Petroleum), has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.

“This is Senator McCain’s first significant choice in building his executive team and it’s a bad one. It has to raise serious doubts in the minds of voters about John McCain’s commitment to conservation, to addressing the impacts of global warming and to ensuring our country ends its dependency on oil.”