September 3, 2008
Welcome to the big time
So I’m kinda stuck on this John McCain character of late, but he keeps providing me with so much to talk about I can’t really help it. The latest is his surprising choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. This inexperienced governor has been vaulted onto the national stage after less than two years in statewide office in the most far-flung state we’ve got. (That statement holds until we grant statehood to Guam, Hawaii might be spread out, but it seems closer to the mainland 48 than it’s northern cousin. So Alaska, buck up and fight for the right of Guam.)
Since McCain’s surprising announcement last Friday, the Palin storyline has continued to evolve in new and unexpected ways. At first there was the shock at the choice of a little-known player to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office. The focus then was on her lack of experience. Just a few years back her biggest position of authority was mayor of a tiny Alaskan fishing town. She’s never had to deal with national issues or national security, and it seems she was mostly chosen for being in possession of ovaries rather than experience.
Back then, and it does seem long ago in the Palin era, I though McCain’s choice was crass and basically made because he figured disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters would support any female candidate, even if Palin’s every position on social and political issues was the diametric opposite to Hillary’s. It just seemed to say a lot about the lack of respect McCain had for women in general and while I’m not female, I felt a bit insulted by this.
Then of course people started to focus in on Palin’s political past. A quote was quickly found of her recently admitting she doesn’t know what the Vice President’s role is. Her stance on Iraq was ambiguous and indecisive, and thus far one of her most notable actions as governor was to fire her sister’s ex-husband from a state job. While the Republican machine is trying to portray her as a fiscal conservative, her record as mayor shows she’s a lot like Our Fine President in that she left her once fiscally solvent municipality with a monstrous debt when she moved on to the statehouse in Juneau.
Her other big selling point to the conservative crowd was her stance as a no-nonsense family values candidate. They crowed about what a humanitarian she was for sticking to her anti-choice principles in not aborting her infant son who was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome before he was born. They also touted her support for abstinence only sex education.
By now, we all know how well that one works, as shortly after she hit the national scene it came out that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant. They quickly started putting out the story that she’s planning to marry the baby’s father and asked the media to respect her children’s privacy. Usually the media leave political children out of the fray, but conservative talkers loved to call Chelsea Clinton names back in the day, and while Bristol should be given some peace to have her child, Palin will need to address this issue every time she wants to tout any credentials on family values.
In all, it’s been a bang up first week in front of the bright national lights for Palin. After the nice introductions, she’s been unmasked as unfamiliar with international issues, unable to act on supposed fiscal conservative proclivities and when it comes to family values, her house is certainly not in a good Republican order. Are these the type of choices we can expect from a President John McCain? If so, that rash attitude could get us in quite a bit of trouble…