I've written a number of critical posts on Sarah Palin. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for the ferocity of one longtime foreign-born friend's terming Sarah Palin a "dunce" and, otherwise complimentary of McCain, questioning his judgment, diligence and motivation in selecting Sarah Palin, not believing that McCain and his staffers could possibly have failed to see the Sarah Palin of the Gibson and Couric interviews. He suggested that the selection of Sarah Palin was solely based on pandering to the social conservatives/evangelical Christians and John McCain had done this country a disservice by naming someone not well-versed on economic, foreign policy, or military matters, literally a heartbeat away from a 72-year-old President's office.
The Reason for the Selection of Palin
I believe, and still believe, that McCain saw in Palin a younger, female version of himself: someone willing to buck the party leadership (particularly in response to corruption), to provide bipartisan leadership and government reform, and to fuse conservative governing principles with a version of Teddy Roosevelt populism.
I don't think it was a cynical attempt to exploit Hillary Clinton's voter base based solely on Sarah Palin's shared gender. Hillary Clinton's voting record is virtually identical with Obama's, and John McCain did not believe Clinton's supporters were primarily motivated by gender identity. I do think McCain noticed the way that Hillary Clinton connected with blue-collar voters and thought that Sarah Palin and her union-member husband, also a champion snowmachine driver, and their 5 kids, might connect with Reagan Democrats.
I think Sarah Palin's gender was a positive factor for McCain, but I think it was part and parcel of a bigger concept, reasserting McCain's legendary maverick reputation. McCain totally swerved the Obama campaign, which responded in an uncharacteristically inept and defensive manner.
Not a Dunce
Sarah Palin took on corruption in her home state, bucked her own party chairman and top GOP officials in her home state, including the Attorney General and the Governor, beat the incumbent governor and then defeated the former Democratic governor, despite her only statewide experience being an appointment to the state oil and gas commission and significantly outspent. She won an agreement with energy corporations doing business with the statement to agree to a long-sought natural gas pipeline without the state coffer giveaways of her predecessor, vetoed millions in project spending from the state legislature, got a large energy distribution to citizens, drastically cut back on the number of federal earmarks, had some reform measures enacted and established a bipartisan record as governor. I think McCain was more impressed with her record of performance and political "street smarts", not whether she graduated from an elitist university.
The Interviews
I think, unfortunately, Sarah Palin's own maverick behavior was her undoing. I don't think she liked being handled; she engaged in certain rogue behavior, e.g., the criticism of the campaign's withdrawal from Michigan and an unauthorized early attack on the Bill Ayers connection. I think she felt confident, as a former TV sports anchorwoman and as someone whom beat the odds in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, that she was up for the Gibson and Couric interviews.
I don't know if it was an attitude issue in terms of interview preparation, or incompetent preparation or both, but she has the bad habit of what Kathleen Parker calls "filibustering a question"--what I would refer to as repeating parts of the question and engaging in run-on convoluted political spin. The infamous question on the newspapers and magazines she reads in which she remarkably does little more than assure the interviewer that, indeed, Alaskans do read newspapers and magazines (but doesn't list a single concrete publication) was probably the single worst response I've ever heard by any politician on a gimme question. My friend, and probably millions of others, took her evasive response to mean that Sarah Palin doesn't read magazines or newspapers and is ill-informed on national issues.
She later told Fox News reporter Carl Cameron that she felt insulted by the question as implying Alaskans don't have access to the same type of reading materials as other people in the lower 48. But especially as someone who should understand the television medium, she should have been more sensitive about the fact few people would ever see any hidden agenda behind the question. Still, she could have said something like, "Well, of course in Alaska, we have access to the same newspapers and magazines other Americans do. Here are some of the ones I read as time permits: xxxx"
I personally find it enigmatic that Sarah Palin seemed unprepared to respond clearly and concisely to totally predictable questions on the financial bailout, the duties of the Vice President, etc. As a former journalist, she herself should have been able to anticipate many of the questions she received. Second, she desperately needs to edit herself: Be concise ("less is more"); be direct and specific; limit political spin; drop unprofessional gimmicks like winking. Third, she needed to establish her credibility as a potential Chief Executive. One thing is that she lost a lot of credibility by asserting her foreign policy credentials given the proximity of Russia and Canada to Alaska's borders and her military credentials because of an Alaskan Air Force base and being in charge of the Alaskan National Guard. Does she seriously believe those credentials to be comparable John McCain's 22 years in the military and 26 years in the Congress? By making nonsense rationalizations like that, she was undercutting McCain's experience argument.
How would I respond to these types of challenges to my credentials? First, I would point out that a number of governors who became President (FDR, Reagan, Carter, and Clinton) have had limited federal policy experience in the same areas. Second, I would point out that as a governor I have a number of Cabinet officers reporting to me and make a number of decisions about budget priorities and the like. Similarly, I will have experts at the Defense Department and State Department providing input to my policy decisions. Third, I'm a quick study, and I'm being mentored by none other than John McCain himself; here are some of our key objectives for the military and international relations over the next four years:.... The overriding concept is to point out that she is not simply relying to her own gut feeling in making decisions, but to reassure she's going to include the opinions of people with more specialized expertise. And she needed to give reassurance to voters about her prowess as a decisionmaker; for example, she won concessions from the state's energy partners by opening a bidding process.
In short, she needed to establish gravitas as a Veep; the Gibson and Couric interviews did not show her using those interviews to vindicate McCain's selection of a 2-year governor as a prospective President if McCain was to die in office. Social and media conservatives may argue that the interviews were edited "out of context". But the fact is, any credible Veep candidate should be able to compare and contrast the McCain campaign vs. the incumbent administration and vs. the competition. She was clearly not cognizant about the "Bush doctrine", for instance, and despite heroic attempts by other conservatives to find a face-saving explanation, such as the fact Bush has had multiple doctrines during his Presidency, she didn't know which one Charlie Gibson was referring to. The real target of Gibson's question was whether the new administration would handle things like Bush did leading to the liberation of Iraq, or are there lessons learned, e.g., gain more of a commitment from our allies, think twice over nation-building commitments, give the UN inspectors more time, etc.
Perhaps the McCain staffers didn't prepare Sarah Palin properly, but I think the ultimate responsibility was Sarah Palin's. Her responses were often incoherent and devoid of substantive content. She seemed irritated at some of the questions being asked. She didn't seem to know when to stop talking.
When I was a professor, I sometimes heard the same question being repeated 2 or 3 times during a lecture. I remember in this one case I was reviewing an undergraduate student group giving a presentation whether they had considered a particular option; the response was something to the effect, "Yeah, we thought about that, but considered it to be a stupid idea." I didn't ridicule students in front of their peers. Basically, I realized that if I responded, most students would empathize with the student being attacked. It was also a question of prudence: if answering the same question took less than 10 seconds, why would I want to spend 10 minutes of lecture time reading the student in question the riot act?
Reportedly, Sarah Palin fumed over the media analyses of her ABC- and CBS-TV interviews. I honestly believe that Sarah Palin was much better informed than the interviews would have led one to believe. But her responses didn't establish her gravitas; she needed to portray a sense of mastery of the basic issues in a confident tone. She needed to go with the flow. She once famously pinched herself and said that that wasn't just baby fat but there was some thick skin there. There were justifiable reasons for Sarah Palin to object to her treatment on the Internet, for example, the speculation about her pregnant daughter Bristol and whether Bristol was, in fact, her youngest sibling Trig's mother.
But there were times, e.g., the post-election leaks suggesting Sarah Palin didn't know some basic facts, when she blasted the anonymous staffers. A lot of people might applaud her standing up for herself, but ironically she was confirming the speculation of ongoing differences during the campaign between McCain and Palin staffers. Sarah Palin preferred Fox News as a media source with talk show hosts Hannity and Greta Van Susteren totally in the tank for her. For example, Greta Van Susteren, a former practicing attorney, did a post-election interview with Palin in Alaska and started off an interview implying she had talked with Carl Cameron's source for the leak, whom she said admitted under her questioning that the notorious question items were contrived. I believe that Van Susteren was referring to a conversation to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, whom admitted that he was not a participant to Sarah Palin's interview or debate preparations but asserted Palin's competence and didn't believe in the rumors. Bill O'Reilly was steamed that Fox News reported the leaks in the first place, insisting that Fox News should have gotten multiple confirmations of the leaks. [Not knowing the context, there are a variety of ways these items could have fleshed out. For instance, on a question regarding NAFTA, she could have limited discussion to bilateral trade between the US and Canada or referenced trade with other countries not party to NAFTA.]
The point is, if Sarah Palin had presented a more substantive image than a series of one-liners and political rhetoric and not flubbed innocuous interview questions (or admit, in the VP candidate debate, that she wasn't going to address the question the moderator Gwin Ifill asked her), these kinds of things wouldn't have an issue. People are fallible and often misspeak.
I personally believe that Sarah Palin is not the "dunce" as my friend, a political independent whom admires Romney and Obama, makes her out to be. This is a woman whom took on corruption head-on and left shattered political careers in her wake, whom won the 2006 gubernatorial primary and general elections as the underdog with limited financial backing. But I think she made a strategic mistake, probably miscalculating that moderates and independents would respond to her style and message which captivated the social conservative base. She needed to show she had a command of economical and foreign policy issues and speak of them with the same confidence she had in discussing domestic energy exploration. Everyone knows that the Alaskan economy is highly dependent on its energy resources; the fact that the Alaskan governor is promoting domestic energy exploration is a given. She needed to talk about things like the twin budget deficits, healthcare, and repairing our international relationships in the aftermath of the Iraq occupation. In terms of being part of a maverick administration, she needed to point out, in concrete terms, how things would be different than under the unpopular incumbent. What kind of reform? Political? Government operations?
Why the Sarah Palin Candidacy Didn't Work
I have written a long post on why McCain lost; a lot of it dealt with a lot of factors beyond his control, principally the economic tsunami and the unprecedentedly low approval ratings of the GOP incumbent. His wounds were in part self-inflicted, e.g., his self-admission that he needed to know more about economics; his use of class warfare rhetoric leading up to his vote against the 2001 tax bill; his agreement to accept federal financing, knowing that Obama had abandoned his pledge to do the same and ability to raise multiple times that and use the surplus to buy market share in battleground and other states; and his decision to suspend his campaign during the period leading to the financial bailout legislation. He failed to capitalize off public discontent with the federal bailout and with the previous year's immigration reform moves. He also backed off any discussion regarding the disconnect between Obama's inclusive political philosophy with his 20-year connection with an Afrocentric church, with a pastor engaging in racially-divisive rhetoric and controversial guest speakers and Obama's pandering to the center during the general election campaign in contrast to his voting record. In order to distinguish himself from Bush, he needed to do more than do some window-dressing and repackaging of Bush's partially-privitized social security and general tax-advantaged basis for health care insurance, including taxpayers not enrolled in an employer plan.
However, the Palin selection itself merits closer attention. First, although issues like political corruption and bipartisanship are important, it's not clear what a maverick team would do; it needs to work through the GOP leadership in the House and Senate, not against them. What McCain needed to reaffirm was his market-based approach to the economy and the willingness to be flexible, with all options on the table, with the opposition. Second, the elephant in the room is entitlement spending, not earmarks.
One of the things McCain really needed to grasp was the concept of change. Bush was the first MBA President, a highly popular Texas governor with a bipartisan record there. He basically promised a government of competence, inclusion, and fiscal responsibility. Instead, he expanded Medicare prescription benefits without proper funding, nominated Texas cronies to positions beyond the level of their competence, sparingly used the veto in controlling, even under a GOP-led Congress, record operational deficits, botched the federal government's handling of the Hurricane Katrina, and found himself getting bogged down in Iraq sectarian violence after the liberation of Iraq with blunders like disassembling the Iraqi army and staffing the military occupation below a stabilizing footprint.
In addition, we witnessed a housing bubble in large part funded by cheap money from the Fed Reserve; the President and Congress only paid passing lip service as home prices escalated beyond the prospective incomes for many homebuyers and lenders invented risky vehicles like option ARM's to get less financially secure buyers into the market, forcing home prices higher. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued their increasing dominance of the US home mortgage market (and increasing vulnerability of the US government because of those GSE activities). More troubling, we found the market for poorly-understood and unregulated derivatives and swaps explode to hundreds of trillions of dollars, which was a nightmare waiting to happen.
Romney would have been the best of the name candidates in the sense he understands the capital markets, he was able to reorganize the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics games, he knows the lessons learned from Massachusetts health care initiative, and he's had to work with a Democratic legislature. He was well-vetted; he had no federal experience, but no one ever had any issues with his gravitas. Romney was very popular with the media conservatives. He had some principal weaknesses: his negative campaigning against Huckabee and McCain had alienated a number of Republicans; moderates and independence saw some position changes (abortion and immigration) as politically expedient; and his Mormon religion caused issues with certain Christian evangelicals.
This seems like Monday morning quarterbacking because when McCain made his selection, he didn't realize an economic tsunami was about to hit. But whereas reform was a significant issue in the 2006 campaign, Obama was running a campaign based on class warfare, jobs, and similar economic issues. Sarah Palin had a very limited appeal in that regard; she had some exposure to domestic oil and gas exploration and production, but two years as the governor of a small (population-wise) state with an economy largely based on energy production, fisheries, etc., had limited appeal.
The Future of Governor Palin
I think Sarah Palin has turned in a credible record as an Alaska governor; I expect the global recession, which has triggered a step decrease in energy prices since July, may affect her 80% approval rating as state revenues decline and she faces unpopular decisions.
However, I do not think she will be a viable candidate on the national front. Some polls, including Rasmussen, seem to be encouraging, but for example, an October 24 Newsweek poll showed her unfavorable rating exceeding her favorable, even though her likeability exceeded 70%. Her unfavorability rating exceeded any VP candidate (including Quayle) over the past 50 years. The poll asked Republicans/leaning if McCain was not elected, who they would be likely to support among listed candidates: Romney 35, Huckabee 26, Palin 20.
It's difficult to know how things will be in 2012. A lot depends on whether Democrats overplay their hand controlling both the legislative and executive branches of government, not to mention the ongoing economic crisis. Recessions typically don't last that long, although the Japanese never did bounce back from their own real estate bubble crash. Will the Democrats try to pass a wishlist of spending initiatives? What about overdue fixes for chronic Medicare and social security funding issues? What steps, if any, will the Democrats take to make progress on the twin deficits? What will Obama do to encourage investment in America to create jobs, not in the public sector, but in the private sector?
My guess (hope) is that that the Republicans in 2012 will be focusing on its roots of fiscal conservativism, a pro-growth economic strategy, and smarter government problem resolution perhaps inspired by creative state-based innovative solutions. I also see the need for projecting a more positive campaign focused more on conservative ideals than on political bickering and personal attacks. My guess is that we will probably see Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal and perhaps some surprises along the way, e.g., if Gen. Petraeus decided to retire and run for office.
How does Sarah Palin fit in the scenario? It's difficult to say. I do not think the Gibson and Couric interviews were a fair reflection of Sarah Palin's knowledge and executive competence. But she has to accept responsibility for the performance she gave; it wasn't gotcha questioning or editing. She is not a novice politician; she knew the risks of coming to an interview unprepared, she knew she might be asked questions she did not like, and as a former television sports anchor, she understood the need to be brief and to get her points across effectively to her target audience. For example, if she felt insulted by the question about how she keeps up with current events, she was hurting no one but herself and the McCain campaign with a passive-aggressive response. For many or most people, like my foreign-born friend, Sarah Palin will not get a second chance to make a good impression. And I suspect many or most voters won't be keeping up with what Sarah Palin is doing in Alaska, although there are rumors of a multi-million dollar book contract and reports that media outlets (including the Oprah show) are lining up for her to make appearances. And there's no doubt she could still pick up some political IOU's from, for example, Georgia US Senator Chambliss facing an upcoming runoff.
