Miss Wasilla Goes to Washington

The Monkey and I were driving from Worcester, MA to Peterborough, NH on Friday, August 29, when we heard the news that John McCain had selected his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. (On a personal note, this day also marked the 2nd birthday of my daughter and I suppose I can always remind her as she grows up that a woman was selected to be Vice President on her birthday, hopefully encouraging her to remember that a woman in America can truly accomplish whatever she sets her mind to).

NPR covered the entierty of her first speech as the GOP’s 2008 Vice Presidential candidate at a rally in Ohio, and I have to admit, while listening to the speech I got a little concerned about Barack Obama’s chances in November.

I have often commented that John McCain lacks charisma and a connection to his audience when he speaks. Considering he will be facing off against one of the most energetic and inspiring politicians to emerge on the national scene in decades, I felt that McCain’s inadequacies in this department would be a huge detriment to his chances of winning the presidency, in accordance with my universal maxim of Presidential Politics, which states: at the end of the day, people vote for people they like, and to a lesser degree, people they know.

While John McCain may be more familiar to more American voters than Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s “exotic” new candidate, I believe Obama is more likeable than John McCain, and that likeability, combined with the huge negatives of John McCain’s Bush-like policies, would carry the day over John McCain’s familiarity to the American electorate.

But with the GOP’s new “rock star,” Sarah Palin on the ticket, that equation suddenly changes, due to her enormous likeability and charisma.

Palin’s Masterful Speech

Since I was listening to her speech on the radio without the distractions of the visuals, the Monkey and I were able to concentrate on the specific diction her speechwriters chose, as well as her personal power and energy enlivening each word she spoke.

She was clearly attempting to appeal to Hillary voters in several strategic ways:

President John F. McCain?

1) When she first alluded John McCain’s in her speech, she referred to him as, “John F. McCain.” This was clearly an attempt to compare McCain to Democratic hero John F. Kennedy, thereby creating warm feelings for McCain among Catholic voters, independents, and Hillary voters. She also paid a compliment to American hero and Democratic Ohio Senator John Glenn in the same breath. In addition, she kept the unusual Kennedy comparison alive when she alluded to the title of Kennedy’s book, “Profiles in Courage,” in her description of John McCain’s hero’s journey through a Hanoi prison
camp:

Profiles in courage, they can be hard to come by these days. You know, so often we just find them in books. But next week, when we nominate John McCain for president, we’re putting one on the ballot! –Governor Sarah Palin, August 29, 2008.

Will 2008 Be The Year?

2) She paid homage to Geraldine Ferraro, who was the Democratic Party’s choice for VP and the first woman to receive that nod on a major ticket, back in 1984. When I first heard her utter Ferraro’s name I was amazed and impressed. Amazed, because it is rare indeed when Republicans give props to members of the opposite party, especially people like Ferraro, who is an icon of the women’s liberation movement, which represents the greatest threat to many pro-life conservatives, conservatives just like Sarah Palin herself, who espouses rather radical views on the subject of abortion (more on this in a moment). Impressed, because this reference indicated the brilliant strategem beneath the speech: appeal to women voters and male Hillary supporters.

3) Finally, she delivered a luminescent nod to Barack Obama’s primary rival during the historic Democratic primary campaign: none other than Hillary Clinton herself. I am struck by how many Republicans have been so “impressed” by the resiliancy and toughness of Hillary Clinton. They love to give her props because of the two-fold effect such reverance and faux adoration achieves:

a) it splinters Democratic unity and welcomes Hillary’s supporters to the fray, and

b) it creates the illusion of the GOP being centrist and inclusionary, which is ironic when you consider the politics of each of the two candidates on the top of the Republican ticket.

Since I’ve already analyzed John McCain’s platform in my “Who Should I Vote For?” series published during the primaries, it is now time to take a closer look at his running mate, the relatively unknown Governor Sarah Palin.

Beyond the Bio: What Does Sarah Palin Stand For?

By now, we’re all pretty familiar with Palin’s bio. She was a high school athlete, beauty queen, “hockey mom,” PTA member, Wasilla, AK City Council member, twice-elected Mayor of Wasilla, AK (population 6,700), and first-term Governor of Alaska (population 683,000). We know that her nomination is an unlikely story, rather inspiring, and tells an “only in America” story similar to Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s unlikey path to the Presidency.

10 Things to Know About Sarah Palin’s Politics

1) She’s a friend of domestic oil development. She supports drilling in ANWR, the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, and has even sued the federal government over its inclusion of Polar Bears on the federal endangered species list, as protecting polar bears might jeopardize oil development in Alaska. Her husband works in the industry.

2) She is a creationist and supports teaching creationism in school.

3) She is fervently anti-abortion, even opposing abortion in the cases of rape and incest. Now that she has announced that her teenaged daughter is pregnant, the GOP spin-meisters are doing an excellent job of using this situation as a living example of her commitment against abortion. To me, however, this situation indicates a lack of her presence in the home and her daughter’s cry for attention from her mother who is busy with a disabled new born, three other children, running a state, and now campaigning all over the country for VP of the United States.

4) She supports abstinence only education in Alaskan schools, but apparently not within her own home, proving that this form of sex education clearly is a flawed technique to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Points 1-4 indicate that she is a social conservative, very much in the vein of George W. Bush.

5) She positions herself as a government reformer, fighting Alaskan corruption and over-spending, although she has supported and received an endorsement from embattled Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who faces seven felonly counts on charges he failed to disclose gifts received from oil companies. She herself is also under investigation for the improperly pressuring an Alaskan Public Safety Commissioner to fire a State Trooper who was going through a bitter with her sister.

Point #5 shows that she claims to be a reformer but engages in abuse of power and cronyism herself (the man she picked to replace the fired Safety Commissioner had to leave his post after just weeks in the midst of sexual harrassment charges. He received a $10,000 severance from Palin).

6) She favors capital punishment.

7) She is a member of the NRA and as a hunter and fisherman herself,
supports gun rights.

Points 6 & 7 appeal to social conservatives and mirror Bush’s policies.

She believes Climate Change is not manmade.

The same as Bush’s brainless view of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions.

9) As far as foreign policy is concerned, there are no definitive positions on her record that clearly state her view on the War in Iraq, other than this quote alluding to the fact the Iraq War is essentially a war for oil:

We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources, which is nonsensical when you consider that domestically we have the supplies ready to go.

This point could certainly be a challenge to the Bush-McCain doctrine, but her comment that “we have the supplies ready to go” indicates her lack of understanding about our ability to replace foreign oil with domestic drilling. It also of course raises questions about McCain’s horrible job of vetting his running mate, who may have a contradictory view on the War in Iraq.

10) Finally, she doesn’t seem to even have a clear idea about what is being asked of her in terms of potentially becoming the Vice President of the United States of America. Watch below:

This video clip indicates a lack of sophistication, historical context, and constitutional understanding that is frankly quite frightening and very reminiscent of George W. Bush. Sadly, what these above points indicate is that the only thing new and fresh about Sarah Palin is her gender and her good looks.

McCain will win his base and the 30% of whackos who still support President Bush, but Sarah Palin’s selection as VP candidiate will do nothing to capture the great divide of independents and moderates who will ultimately decide this election.