It's not surprising to me that the media conservatives, who were ecstatic that Sarah Palin, in the unique position of having recently given birth to a Down syndrome child, having rejected eugenic abortion, and coming from an energy-producing state and promoting tapping ANWR, which her running mate opposed, was chosen to be on the ticket, are seething at the post-election news leaking out regarding Sarah Palin. Not a few are accusing anonymous McCain staffers of moral cowardice for not stepping forward and identifying themselves, self-righteously refusing to accept the leaked stories at face value but downplaying any incidents as likely distorted out of context, and slamming McCain for not coming to her immediate defense. Other than the reporting of what has been said by staffers, the Fox News Channel's interviewers and talk show hosts, at least on this topic, have presented primarily viewpoints sympathetic to the counterattack against the leaks, including females arguing the attacks are motivated by sexism and Sarah Palin is a very smart woman.
Are McCain Staffers Scapegoating Palin for the Loss?
Media conservatives have used these leaks as sour grapes by an incompetently run failed campaign to renew their assault on John McCain as Republican-In-Name-Only and to argue that McCain allowed Obama to do an end-run to appeal to the majority center-right of America.
First of all, John McCain took full responsibility for the election loss in his concession speech. He also praised Sarah Palin, identifying her as part of the future of the Republican Party. I don't think he needs to address the matter further. I feel that the leaks are not inconsistent with other things that surfaced during the campaign, e.g., her interview performance with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric and the kerfuffle over her attire bought for her use during the campaign.
Second, John McCain got about 46% of the vote, which is more than most final polls indicated, when Bush's job approval rating was about 26%. McCain lost North Carolina by 1%, Indiana by 1%, Florida by 2%, Ohio by 3%, and Virginia by 4%, despite being vastly outorganized and outspent by the Obama campaign, in a typical change year election, when Obama was fortuitously aided by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, less than 2 months before election day. I can't think of a single Republican whom could have done better in this election year under these circumstances. I disagreed with several things in the McCain campaign strategy, and I will address these in a future post.
But there's this ongoing myth, especially with the media conservatives, that the reason the Republicans lost was because McCain didn't carry the water on conservative issues, such as legal immigration, and reveal Obama's hidden liberal agenda. The fact is that John McCain, despite his politically courageous support of immigration reform, only won about 30% of the Hispanic vote (vs. Bush's approximately 44%), and a lot of that has to do with McCain paying a political price for Hispanic anger over the immigration controversy, which is perceived as culturally motivated. Apparently the GOP has not learned the lesson of California, where former Governor Pete Wilson's political exploitation of the immigration issue has, except for movie star and Republican moderate Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, all but vanguished the GOP from statewide office.
No, I don't think there was any scapegoating of Palin. I think there was a desire for the sake of John McCain not to give the Obama campaign ammunition. I reject there was an intent to "smear". How do you smear the reputation of a candidate whom didn't know what the 'Bush doctrine' is, failed to come up with the name of a single newspaper or magazine she reads, or incorrectly described her target job to a bunch of third-graders, all in front of a camera?
Was Palin a Plus or Minus for the Campaign?
One might argue that the media conservatives weren't as worried over illegal immigration in Alaska from Russia or Canada.
First and foremost, I called on McCain to dump Palin before the Vice-Presidential debate; this is despite my initial enthusiastic support, although some concern over the Troopergate scandal, and I wrote a subsequent post addressing rumors that Palin might run for President in 2012. Hence, it shouldn't be a surprise to any blog readers that I believe Sarah Palin was a minus for the campaign. I think she has a certain charisma, her decision to give birth to a special-needs child Trig is inspirational, and I applaud her political courage in taking on corrupt public officials, including relevant members of the Alaskan Republican Party.
"Let Palin be Palin!" shouted the media conservatives. One could argue that Palin excited many in the conservative base to volunteer and get the vote out for the GOP. Many were excited by the fact that Sarah Palin broke the glass ceiling on the Republican ticket, being the first female national candidate.
However, one thing is absolutely clear: Palin's favorability ratings started going down, as well as McCain's own poll numbers, after her initial interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. There have been a number of apologists trying to explain away Sarah Palin's abysmal performance on easy, predictable questions. I cannot think of a single politician or even another person whom would babble incoherently in response to a question of what newspapers or magazines she reads to keep current; it wasn't intended to be a gotcha question. When Fox News interviewed her several days later, Palin had a ready response for the same question and had a disingenuous explanation for her earlier response: She regarded the Couric question as a cultural insult against Alaskans, implying that they didn't read newspapers or magazines. (At the same time, Sarah Palin insists she has a thick skin.)
When I first learned of Sarah Palin, as credentials to be President, her record as a mayor and 2-year governor seemed somewhat light, but I was impressed by her reformist and bipartisan record and her sky-high approval ratings; in theory, you can make a quality vs. quantity argument. She seemed to be reasonably articulate in her acceptance address in Ohio and her nomination address at the Republican National Convention. I made a tacit assumption that a politically-ambitious woman, such as Sarah Palin, was reasonably well-versed on current events and American history, at least as well-informed as I am.
I have already expressed my post-selection reservations about Palin on previous points, but when she started reusing debunked soundbites, like telling the Congress 'thanks but no thanks for the Bridge to Nowhere: if we want the bridge, we will build it ourselves'. The reality is that Congress (including Obama) agreed to give the $230M request to Alaska, but Alaska was free to use the money for other projects (which it did). Palin, in fact, campaigned FOR the Gravina Island Bridge. But at some point she was given a revised project budget that showed the bridge cost had almost doubled. She didn't include any bridge expenditures in the state budget and in September of that first year, after the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse, she killed the project. But the bridge money was approved by Congress before Palin ever became governor, and the money had already been designated for other infrastructure projects; she certainly didn't volunteer to return the money. Not only that, but Alaskans hate the term "Bridge to Nowhere" for the Gravina Island Bridge. At minimum, reusing an applause line that had been publicly refuted seemed odd and raised a red flag.
There were other things that surfaced of an unexpected nature. It never occurred to me that a pageant swimsuit runway clip of a Vice Presidential candidate would surface, or a college dorm snapshot of Sarah Heath sitting on a bed cross-legged proudly stretching out a t-shirt reading "I may be broke, but I'm not flat-busted".
In terms of the initial Gibson and Couric interviews, it's seemed, at minimum, one should have been prepared to discuss the prior 2 terms of George Bush--because the Democratic candidates had been bashing Bush nonstop for 2 years. Thus, Palin should be cognizant of the Democratic criticisms of Bush--his foreign policy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, civil liberties (FISA), Guantanamo Bay detention, torture policy and intelligence activities, child health insurance, social security privitization, judicial nominees, the federal and trade deficits, homeland security (especially port security), FEMA, taxes, business regulation, middle-class wage growth, etc. Second, Palin should have been able to articulate substantive differences between Bush and McCain on domestic and foreign policy and also between McCain and Obama. Third, she should have been ready to compare and contrast domestic and foreign policy priorities.
The latest revelations indicate that Palin was initially unable to identify the countries party to NAFTA, didn't know Africa was a continent, geographical layouts of Middle Eastern countries, basic civics knowledge (structures on the local, state, and federal levels), etc. There are also allegations made about diva behavior (e.g., refusing to be prepped for the critical Couric interviews) and/or temper tantrums, rogue behavior (e.g., her Fox News interview disagreeing with the campaign's decision to abandon Michigan; the spoofed Sarkozy call), other odd behavior (e.g., answering McCain staff door knocks dressed only in a bath towel), and Sarah/Todd Palin clothes-buying binges, sometimes on staff personal credit cards. Sarah Palin refused to acknowledge any allegations without a name behind them, and conservative spokesmen such as former Senator Rick Santorum and Laura Ingraham are in a state of denial and demanding that John McCain defend Sarah Palin from what they regard as a post-election fingerpointing smear. (Actually, John McCain himself predicted dysfunctional post-campaign staff behavior if he lost.)
I'm not going to address the diva behavior or clothing purchase allegations. However, Sarah Palin recently addressed an elementary school class and, in responding to a child's question about what a Vice President does, answering that she would be running the Senate and influencing policy. [Actually, the primary function of the VP is to replace the President in the event of a disabling event; he or she formally presides over the Senate and votes only in event of a tie.] This just follows a number of fairly disturbing interview gaffes; despite valiant excuses by some conservatives to excuse Palin, it's fairly clear that Sarah Palin has no clue what the 'Bush doctrine' was--in any of its incarnations and bluffed a response based on the context Charlie Gibson gave her. But then came other interview questions, like identifying Supreme Court decisions OTHER than Roe v. Wade; Palin starts babbling with the wording of a question--something she repeatedly has a tendency to do--and then starts talking about Roe v Wade. Then there's the question of what newspapers and magazines she reads to keep current, and she starts rewording the question again--but fails to cite a single newspaper or magazine by name.
A number of media conservatives have praised her performance in the debate against Joe Biden, pointing out that he made about a dozen factual errors. However, the point I remember from the get-go (and I underscored this in earlier Palin posts) is Joe Biden has repeatedly misstated McCain's proposal on health care (this is a key point because McCain was badly trailing Obama on the topic of healthcare, which the McCain campaign basically ignored over the last few months of the campaign), and Palin is totally ignoring that discussion and keeps going back to energy to make trivial, predictable points about domestic production. At one point, she openly admits she's going to disregard the question the moderator asked about and talk on what she wants. I had never seen that happen in a televised debate before.
Sarah Palin often engaged in inappropriate winking and formulaic sound bite stump speeches but never really pushed Obama, whom might be able to easily turn aside Palin's criticisms in one or 2 sentences (e.g., references to Ayers).
I personally thought Sarah Palin didn't bring anything to the table on energy. The natural gas pipeline deal she referenced is years away from trickling to the lower 48. Even if we aggressively deploy all domestic sources, at best we can only dent the current 60% daily gap supplied by external sources. Now, true, the Democratic response of a moratorium on offshore drilling sustains indefinitely a reliance on imported sources and contributes to the trade deficit. Unless we are able to displace oil with other resources--e.g., replacing natural gas power plants with nuclear power plants and then using compressed gas to replace gasoline--or using energy from nuclear plants to power electric cars. You need to talk from a big-picture perspective, including time-to-market. Second, Palin ignored Biden's jab that what Sarah did in Alaska was the equivalent of a windfall profits tax which is anathema to McCain and almost every other Republican. Now, granted, somebody reading this might say, "Ronald, you might be say something that an energy czar might understand, but Palin is going to reach more people saying "Drill, baby, drill". The response is, it's easier for me to simplify my message than for Palin to explain how punitive corporate tax policies will result in the companies' drilling.
The bottom line is that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be President of the United States. There is no doubt that there was a double standard here: people are going to put greater emphasis on the running mate of a 72-year-old President than a 47-year-old given typical lifespans. I personally thought, and still do, that Joe Biden was a terrible choice of a running mate. It is true that Biden brings some foreign policy experience, but no administrative experience and he did not represent ideological diversity (his voting record is almost identical to Obama's). I thought Bill Richardson would provide an ethnic dream ticket given Richardson diverse background. The naming of Hllary Clinton would have clearly been extraordinary for the base. Or Obama could have chosen a centrist former governor like Senator Nelson of Nebraska. So when people claim Obama made a great choice, I didn't see it at all, because I think any of the above choices would have made a better ticket.
Don't get me wrong--I think Sarah Palin can learn from her mistakes. But on the national stage, I think you have one time to make a "first impression". I did not really see evidence she had the initiative to diagnose and resolve her knowledge gaps; for example, the erroneous job description for the VP was given to the elementary school class about 2 weeks before the election. The first contacts with Palin were made several months earlier. You would have had thought she had had enough time to read the US Constitution in the interim.
I'm not saying that Sarah Palin was "the" reason for McCain's loss. This was a change election year, the incumbent President to whom McCain was tied had an approval rating of about 26%, Obama had bought a lead in many battleground states with a better organization and a massive advantage in fundings, and McCain faced the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. I think there were issues with McCain's own performance--he was too predictable during the debates, he repeatedly let Obama get away with the 95% tax cut claim, never pointed out there weren't enough high-end taxpayers to pay for Obama's programs, and didn't really question what Obama meant by tax cuts to people whom paid no taxes until Joe the Plumber got involved. But the choice of VP candidates is one of the easier comparisons voters can make regarding the judgment of candidates.
Was Sarah Palin a plus or minus for the campaign? I think she's popular to the base, but, you know, when Obama made the Freedom of Choice Act one of his top legislative priorities in the campaign, I don't think the pro-life movement needed Sarah Palin to motivate the base. Palin DID NOT win over independents and moderates (and has zero appeal among liberals). I think in the end the loss of moderates and independents outweighed any gain in conservative votes.
Did McCain Vet Palin?
I don't know the specifics of the vetting process, but I doubt that they give a quiz on current events, high school civics, etc. I presume the McCain campaign reviewed public records of her political career, watched her gubernatorial debates, etc.
I don't think McCain was engaged in a desperate move, as some seem to think. I think the fact that Sarah Palin was female was a positive point, but Palin was never chosen as a pure Hillary play. I honestly believe it was more Palin's spunkiness on going head-to-head with members of her own party over corruption and beating an incumbent governor and then a former governor to win her gubernatorial campaign, vetoing spending bills, and working in a bipartisan manner.
I do think they realized there was an issue after Palin was chosen, which explains why they heavily controlled the media's access to her; none of what happened should have surprised anyone. Shouldn't McCain have asked her to step down if and when they determined there was a problem?
I think McCain was caught in a dilemma: If he replaced Palin, it was an admission he had made a mistake, and it also would have infuriated the highly motivated conservative base. If he didn't replace Palin, he risked more damage with liberals and moderates. I don't think it's an accident that McCain attended the final major (NBC-TV) Palin interview. I think there was a hope and expectation that Palin could grow into the role.
