John McCain has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Gov. Palin was first elected to the position in 2006 and previously served as the mayor of Wasilla (pop. 5,470). She also served on the town’s city council. She has a degree from the University of Idaho where she minored in political science. That is the extent of her political experience.
Her biography is fascinating. She is only 44 years-old. She eloped with her highschool sweetheart, a Yup’ik Eskimo. They have five children named: Track 18, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, Piper, 7, and Trig (who was born on April 18th). Trig has Down’s Syndrome. The Palins knew that Trig had an extra chromosome but decided to go ahead with the pregnancy.
“I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”
Palin is an avid hunter and her husband is a champion snowmobiler who works for British Petroleum. She has admitted to smoking the ganja but says she didn’t enjoy it. She was the runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest. I wonder if Cindy is ready to see her husband campaigning around the country with a beauty queen.
You’ll be seeing this quote quite a lot today:
In an interview just a month ago, she dissed the job, saying it didn’t seem “productive.”
In fact, she said she doesn’t know what the vice president does.
Larry Kudlow of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.” asked her about the possibility of becoming McCain’s ticket mate.
Palin replied: “As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.”
You’ll also be hearing a lot about an abuse of power investigation. It’s nothing really major but it appears she fired the Commissioner of Public Safety because he would not fire her sister’s ex-husband. Her sister’s ex-husband had allegedly threatened to kill Palin’s father and had used a taser on his 11-year old stepson. I don’t know why Palin didn’t have him arrested rather than using a cut-out to have him fired. Whatever. Alaskan politics are crazy and corrupt.
In fact, Palin was elected on a platform of reform. With the Alaskan GOP embroiled in federal corruption investigations, Palin promised a new day. Needless to say, this abuse of power investigation undermines her reform message. In fact, most political observers thought the abuse of power investigation had ended any possibility that she would be selected as vice-president.
I am not aware of Palin having any knowledge or experience with foreign affairs, terrorism, the armed forces, or the federal bureaucracy. I watched her give a joint interview with Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano on (I think) PBS a few months ago. It was clear that she had a good relationship with Napolitano and that she was a ‘new kind of Republican’. I was impressed with her as a person. But that is all I remember from the interview and I have never seen her speak in any other forum.
Considering John McCain’s age and history with cancer, this pick has extra importance. It’s hard to envision Gov. Palin becoming president on short notice. It also undermines McCain’s focus on foreign policy and experience. But, McCain had to do something bold. He is going to try to narrow the gender gap. Will women follow?
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on if / how this will affect the tone of the VP debates. I have a hard time envisioning Biden eviscerating Palin like he would someone like Mittens.
Biden will only have to answer the questions to beat her. She won’t know the answers.
Precisely. He’ll need to be, and will be, a gentleman. Just answer the questions, and let the differences show by her lack of knowledge.
Yeah, saw it. Strikes me as possibly a little too harsh a little too early. What do you think?
Not too harsh. Define the argument or lose the chance.
Only place farther flung from mainstream USA that Alaska is Hawaii..
Hard to decry putting someone with no foreign policy experience a heartbeat from the presidency when it’s the Presidential Candidate that shares that vulnerability.
Hard to beat on a woman in the debates…
An excellent choice. The only thing Americans like more than self-congratulation for doing the right thing (first black candidate) is to self-congratulate for doing a smaller right thing (first female VP candidate in a while). Huge fans of baby steps we are.
Not a president for 50% (women), but one for minorities (less than 50%)? How about a VP for white christian women in stead (much less than 50%)?
I used to say this election has a 50/50 result based on whether or not we have expanded the scope of our military conflicts. This VP choice effectively blocks Obama’s move to Biden. Attack dog goes after beauty pagent queen? Doesn’t sit right. It also allows people to still feel progressive while voting their fears. Brilliant.
New Prediction (no war): McCain 51/Obama 47/Others 2
New Prediction (war): McCain 54/Obama 43/Others 3
Sorry to remind everyone, but the decisive %age of the electorate is not rational as a corpus. They are motivated by fear more than hope and value gotcha politics over reality.
God, I hope I’m wrong.
I agree partly with your assessment — that Palin is a more dangerous candidate than first appearances suggest. She’s a risky candidate, not having been on the national stage, and if the polls don’t bounce in McCain’s directin after the St Paul thugfest, the MSM willturn on him, because their bread is buttered by power, and he will be losing it. In that event, Palin gets the scrutiny she deserves. If the bounce goes h is way, then we are back in your scenario. I still think that Obama is in the stronger situation — more enthusiasm, more ways to win than McCain, who has to draw an inside straight by taking FL, OH and MI to pull his election off. Not clear that Palin helps him in any of those states relative to the other possible candidates that he rejected.
I guess that’s true.
I’m a little let down – I was looking forward to some spectacular ass kickings.
I think the potential for ass kicking still exists. Debaters often redirect whatever question they are given to give the answers they want – Biden can focus all his responses on “Candidate McCain” and let it rip.
Good point. OK, I’ll still watch 🙂
Drill and Kill
vs.
Evolve and Solve
If you needed proof that Karl Rove’s durty ass cynical fingerprints were all over McSame’s VP choice, this baldly manipulative pick seals the deal.
I don’t think she’ll make it, frankly.
and ends at birth.
Who’s gonna take care of the 4 month 1 week old child with Down’s? Such children are VERY TIME-CONSUMING.
This is simply an appalling decision.
Excellent. Everyone repeat this to everyone they know before anything else is known about this person.
McCain’s always ready to pick a younger woman to aid his career. Look out, Cindy!
This choice is overt pandering, a lame attempt to pull in the last remaining 200 PUMA votes.
Palin is anti-choice and a fundamentalist xtian. She opposed putting polar bears on the endangered list. She’s hot for drilling in the Alaskan wilderness reserve. She has a fucking bear skin in her office that she killed herself!
I want someone to ask her, since she’s such a follower of xtianity, if she gets her husband’s approval before she makes any governing decisions.
It’s going to be hard for Biden to crush her in debate because she’s going to be standing there looking like a sweet little wife-y.
I agree with everything except that last sentence. I think Booman is right, all Biden is going to have to do is show up and answer the questions.
Even on the questions she might be qualified in some way to speak to (reproductive choice, oil policy and the environment, most likely), she’ll be so out-of-step with the American people that she won’t have a chance.
more correctly: reproductive non-choice
All in how you look at it. Her stand on reproductive choice is apparently “If you’re a woman, you don’t get any choice.”
This pick is nothing but trouble. The investigation looks to be at a standstill, the guy will fall on his sword and there are apparently tapes that were just released that indicate she didn’t know about it.
Also just like Biden doesn’t dilute Obama’s change argument, Palin won’t dilute McCain’s experience argument much. McCain will still be at the top of the ticket just like Obama will be. Because the GOP fire is directed at the P candidate as opposed to the VP it is more effective I think than fire directed at the VP candidate. That said, we’ll just have to see how it shakes out, the main argument needs to be that McPOW just doesn’t have what it takes to be president.
God, this election was supposed to be in the bag but is has done nothing but get harder and harder as the year goes on.
Bar none.
Nah, you’re forgetting Dan Quayle …
How about Admiral Stockdale?
This pick is clearly worse than Quayle. Clearly.
I never thought I’d see a candidate worse than Quayle, but if you live long enough you see everything, I guess. A co-worker commented “They must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel in the GOP.” I think that will be the judgment of the undecideds and registered-independents.
Yeah. People don’t like being put into the position of being embarrassed somebody else’s stupidity. Their reaction is to back off. Nobody’s going to want to identify themselves with this pitiful ticket.
You forget that McCain’s mortality is the huge elephant in the room. The experience argument is that there’s a strong chance that the White House will be inherited by an unknown wingnut extremist with no experience except as the mayor of Mayberry and governor of a state a third the population size of Chicago. No foreign policy experience, no security experience, no more constiuents than the mayor of Memphis. Is this who even wingnuts want answering the 3am phone call?
As far as Democrats are concerned.
Consider that nobody outside of Alaska knows anything about her. That means we can define her any way we want. We can repeatedly bring up the ethics angle. We can repeatedly bring up the experience issue. We can set her up against Biden in a debate and watch the fun. I would not go there personally, but you know there’s going to be a whisper campaign about her youngest baby and how tough it’ll be to be Vice President and raise him. There’ll be plenty more.
Yeah, this is great. Much is being made of McSame being a crap shooter who’s willing to take a chance once in a while. Well, with this one I think he’s betting his Presidential aspirations on rolling boxcars. Yeah, it happens once in a while, but no one rational bets the farm on a 1-in-36 chance.
Although I guess it fits right in with Obama’s statement last night about a 10% chance of change with McSame.
The point about the Down’s baby is that the amount of effort to raise and educate such a child is enormous. She has decided that the child cannot be salvaged, since she will not be putting in that time.
What are family values, anyway?
never, ever, disrespect a woman’s choice. She chose to have her baby. That’s all you need to know, or say, about the matter.
The baby will have excellent care and you know it.
I love you, BooMan.
I think for the most part candidates’ younger kids should be left out of political discussions. Spouses are sometimes fair game, but I don’t think kids should be.
It’s a personal choice, I’ll admit that. And I’ll admit there are exceptions. Certainly when the kid is old enough to be, oh, say Ted Stevens’ son that rule doesn’t apply. And if a hypothetical candidate’s child was alleged to be involved in gang activity, that would be a major issue (and probably disqualify them from being considered for nomination in the first place, actually). This may very well be one of the exceptions. Any toddler is going to be a handful to look after at age one, irrespective of their special needs.
On the flip side, presumably if Palin were to win I suspect Mr. Sarah would have to quit his job with BP, and he’d probably be in charge of the domestic side of the household. That’s probably the defense the Republicans will use.
This has EVERYTHING to do with the mother.
A modest amount of research (~ 1 min) will pull up many references about the effort involved in a Down’s child. This decision of the MOTHER is very very irresponsible.
You’re out of bounds here. If she was a man who had a kid with Down’s syndrome, no one would question his love for his child if he continued to work. She is a woman who has enough money to take good care of her children no matter how much or if she works outside the home. Even if she didn’t, it simply is none of our business.
This argument is right, but is precisely the sort of logical, empathetic line of reasoning that loses opportunities to hobble your enemies.
AKA: “spineless democrats do right thing again, lose.”
Define her as a selfish opportunist whose remote, esoteric beliefs (does she pray to Inuit gods too?) threatens the purity of America’s precious bodily fluids.. You get the idea.. It doesn’t matter if the attack is off base or proven publicly wrong..
Over time, it’s proven that even countermanded arguments perist and morph into truisms…
There would be a tremendous backlash if Dems attacked her mothering instincts. It is simply off the table. People will know the facts and make their own conclusions. It would be suicide for dems to take that road.
you’re way off.
Wait a minute, BooMan. She went back to work three days after her baby was born. I’ve lived a long time and I never knew of a woman going back to work that quickly.
Now it could be described as “devotion to her work”, but where the hell are her mothering instincts? It is about her, and not the baby.
And if it were a man in the same situation of course he wouldn’t be blamed, because everyone would assume his “little wifey” was home doing the caregiving.
If any Democrat goes on television and criticizes Palin for having that baby or for going back to work, I will personally start a primary challenge against them for being stupid.
You can think whatever you want, but if you make that political argument you are committing malpractice.
You are 1000%, totally right if any Democrat does it. Hire the email spammer that does the secret muslim emails.
Since when have “mothering instincts” been a prerequisite to a political career? Stick to the issues…they are enough.
I agree, and yes this should be off bounds. And yet you know she’s going to be pimping out this kid for all the sympathy he’s worth. Maybe this is just one of those things you can’t really counter.
I was impressed that when she introduced him she said nothing about his condition.
There are a hundred good arguments you can use to attack Palin very effectively. She has less experience than Obama or Biden. Less expertise on any topic you care to name. And she is far more likely to suceed to the top job than Biden.
Her appointment renders Obama’s alleged lack of experience almost moot. There’s going to be an awful lot of disappointed GOPERS pissed that their man didn’t get the job. She offers no regional boost whatsoever. Are Hillary supporters really going to vote for McShame because Palin is a women – that would be sexism of the highest order.
Why on earth would you pick the one bad argument (her child) that will get her the sympathy vote from all the undecideds and all the mothers who have had to choose between family and career? If you want to use Rovian tactics, join the GOP.
It’ll be interesting, to say the least, to see how the far right fundies (who like their women chained to the stove, surrounded by happy smiling little cherubs) will take to the idea of a brand new Mommie running off to campaign for the Vice Presidency, all set take on running the whole country if McCain kicks off!
There is only ONE KIND of woman (or man..or any kind of “other-gendered” person!) that THIS WOMAN ever wants to see anywhere NEAR the White house, and is one who HAS THE QUALIFICATIONS to be there.
Any woman who would vote for McCain, just because he’s chosen Palin to run with him, would be women just like her, who have swallowed enough of the Stepford Sauce and Republican RotGut.. to have permanently pickled their brains.
Just a thought. Will Bush pardon Palin of any potential wrong-doing in “troopergate” in order to halt the investigation in its tracks? Would a pardon be like an admission of guilt for Palin? Or would it put the issue to bed?
I thought her speech was very good, and she is beautiful which will help, but the very idea that she is qualified to be essentially the president, given McCain’s age and health, will be a hard one to assert.
Final note on Palin:
George H.W. Bush won the first time at least with a pretty awful f’in VP pick too.
Nobody’s talking about Obama’s speech right now. They are talking about Palin. If this election becomes about her instead of the issues, we lose.
Hey there. I understand your concern, but it’s OK. They’re not going to stop talking about the speech–it will be discussed, but so will this crappy pick. The campaign will know how to deal with this. I’m sure it was gamed out ahead of time. With the convention this close, the campaign had to factor-in that they’d pull this kind of stunt.
BTW, I work with someone who worked for a repub admin (not the current monstrosity)–he’s got the “Power Wall picture” to prove it–and he basically blasted the choice, saying:
Pick someone for VP who is qualified!
It’s just one person, but there it is. Repubs, for the most part, will put on a brave front–but they know better, and they know this pick is crap. This is the best they can do, and they know it. Look at how weak their bench is!
They’ll do what they’ve always done: Fear, smear and steal. That is truly all they have left.
Let’s get to work.
I don’t know that disbelief and confusion are helpful to McCain’s chances. Except for far wingnutstan, all I’m hearing is pretty much “What the f***?” Pretty much the effect he could have achieved by taking a dump on the White House lawn.
.
(Andrew Halcro) Governor Sarah Palin was interviewed along side Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano on the Charlie Rose show which aired on PBS.
Posted are two of the more insightful exchanges between Rose and Palin concerning Alaska’s natural gas pipeline and the Ketchikan Island Bridge. In addition, a selection of quotes are posted concerning the same topics so you can draw your own conclusions.
Complete interview: A conversation with governors Janet Napolitano and Sarah Palin
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Hey! I know Wasilla- lived nearby for 8 years. There are some serious problems that she’s had to deal with- like, um…
I got one! The road between Wasilla and Anchorage is prime moose-leaping lane. People die every year from moose/vehicle interactions. We should ask what her policy is on fencing that expanse to keep moose out. Then we apply it to illegal immigration, see? Instant experience!
Jokes aside, Wasilla is whacked. Bet their percentage of AWOL dads with guns quintuples the national average.
This just smacks of tokenism–she’s a know-nothing wingnut with straight teeth. Whatever. Let ’em swim in it.
McKept wanted to show that he could do “change” too. Geez, that campaign is still reacting to Obama. But who else could it be?
Troy McClure, better known as Romney? Please. They can’t stand each other, and even if they got over it enough to fake it, he’s a victim of rethug bigotry. That base AIN’T voting for someone they consider part of a cult. Period. Besides–he’d only add to the vast number of houses and flip-flops they already own.
Joe Lieberman? Please. He’s seen–at best–as a useful idiot. A VERY useful idiot. But a (nominally) pro-choice Democratic (in their minds) idiot. And again the base’s bigotry wouldn’t allow for it.
Tom Ridge Even if he could win Pennsylvania for them, he’s pro-choice. Non-starter.
Tim Pawlenty? Wake me when you’re done. But then, he was too “safe” and they wanted to shake up things.
All I can say is–Cindy needs to keep her eye on her. She knows full well the worth of his marriage vows when in the midst of a beauty queen.
That’s probably the gossip line to push. “Beauty queen” itself is pejorative, let alone that he dumped one beauty queen he’d married to take up with a younger, richer one, Cindy, and now he’s going to be on the campaign trail with a third beauty queen he wants to make president. (And ignored/overlooked/rejected the more mature, competent, experienced Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson when he started looking for a female Republican running mate.)
Reminds me of those Bob Dole-Brittney Speers Pepsi ads.
Well, maybe she can do the smiling while McKept keeps his mouth shut. His teeth are so yellow until it looks as if he just ate a stick of margarine.
And that creepy cackle of his? Shoot, maybe this IS an improvement.
Did the A-list get cold feet or is this McCain being mavericky? It’s a longshot play that has half-assed vetting written all over it. Anything there will come out. See: Jack Ryan.
The best interest of the GOP would be a southern VP pick and maintaining an obstructionist bulwark in Congress.
Looks like McTaint is going to auger in.
I was wondering who turned him down before he chose her. I hope we find out.
I have to believe .. the A-listers didn’t want to go down with a sinking ship .. after all .. Palin is toast if McCain gets his doors blown off .. Republicans don’t take well to losers .. especially ones that get crushed
Just saw the picture, I thought Tina Fey supported Hillary.
Just a question, but we know there are a significant number of people who won’t vote for a black man. Are there also a large number who would never vote for a woman?
when l heard this on npr this morning my first thought was this is unfuckingbelievable. what a desperate, cynical ploy…although l expected it to be a woman, kay bailey h. frankly…palin never entered my consciousness.
this has got rove’s hoof prints all over it and is clearly a sop to the fundies, and not unlikely to bring the 28%’ers firmly back into the fold. [my ex-sister in laws’ family has one criteria that’s the deciding factor: pro-life.] their patriarchal tendencies aside, they’ll now be comfortable voting for mcstain because it completely camouflages the racist undertones.
methinks this election just got a whole lot more complicated.
bring on the tailored camo pantsuits…
So, Booman, how does Mrs. Palin’s selection alter your MoDo threat matrix?
Good point. MoDo is definitely going to be critical of this pick. Right?
The beauty contest angle just screams MoDo. I hope she does something with Mrs. Palin.