Senator John McCain, as I write this, is preparing to name Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. This is an out of the box, unconventional choice that will no doubt stir quite a bit of controversy. The Blog To Be Named Later returns to clarify the issue. It’s very simple: John McCain, the old warrior, has surrendered his principles once again for the sake of ambition.
What does that mean? If John McCain were running for president thirty years ago (he’s old enough to have done that) he would have been free to pick a running mate that met his own personal standard of “ready to be president.” But this is a very different Republican Party, and a different political environment.
If John McCain were a younger man, if this weren’t his last chance after watching a moron take the nomination away from him eight years ago, he would be less susceptible to making a crass political choice. But he’s not young; today is his 72nd birthday.
This choice will be presented of evidence of McCain’s maverick nature, that he would think outside the box and choose a woman. Don’t be fooled. This is a pick of desperation, and in many ways, a pick of surrender.
McCain is surrendering to the reality that his age stands in stark contrast to that of his opponent. That’s a reasonable political calculation, to pick a young, dynamic running mate. The problem is, John McCain has spent months attacking Barack Obama for youth and inexperience, and he has today chosen for vice president someone even younger and with less experience. There are two great problems with this. First, it exposes McCain to charges of hypocrisy. More importantly, it exposes the United States of America to the possibility that it could have a manifestly unqualified president in a dangerous time in this country’s history.
To be fair, Obama’s resume is not significantly more impressive than Palin’s. Yes, I prefer four years in the Senate to two years in an igloo. Yes, I prefer someone who has gone through the fire of a long presidential campaign and has the demonstrated ability to inspire and lead. Yes, I think Obama’s choice of Joe Biden compares very favorably to McCain’s pick. But an Obama supporter cannot fairly complain about Palin’s inexperience, and must instead accept her meager resume and say, okay, fine, now we can stop talking about readiness to be president.
Instead, I choose to focus on McCain’s greatest surrender, and that is to the far right wing of the Republican Party. Sarah Palin is a genuine conservative, and that makes her more acceptable to the “values” Republicans. For all McCain’s tough talk, the Republicans aren’t fundamentally about foreign policy and national security. If they were, John McCain would have selected Tom Ridge, the former governor of a major state and later the first Director of Homeland Security. Or Senator Joe Lieberman, a longtime Senate veteran and the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. By most accounts, McCain wanted to pick Lieberman. They are close friends, they agree on the war, Lieberman has been an effective campaign sidekick and advocate for McCain. If McCain were really a maverick, he would have taken the former Democrat turned Independent Senator from Connecticut.
Why didn't he? Lieberman and Ridge support abortion rights, and McCain is not willing to offend the conservatives who have always viewed McCain with suspicion. This is but the latest in an increasingly long series of examples of McCain’s desperation.
After he was defeated in 2000, unjustly and unfairly, through rumor and innuendo, and had to watch George W. Bush claim the nomination that he deserved, John McCain realized that if he were to keep his flickering presidential hopes alive, he was going to have to do some pretty unpleasant things. Like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, he was going to have to crawl through shit to get where he wanted to go.
So he endorsed Bush for re-election, campaigned with him, hugged the bastard, and sold his soul. He could have made a principled decision to oppose an incompetent Commander in Chief, but instead he chose to embrace him.
During Bush’s second term, McCain watched as the occupation of Iraq was bungled and his own recommendations ignored. But he remained silent. Well, that’s not true. He actually remained vocal in his support of George W. Bush. As the 2008 election approached, McCain reached out to the evangelicals who scorned him in 2000. He mended fences with Jerry Falwell. He changed his position on tax cuts for the wealthy. He changed his position on abortion. He changed his position on ethanol. He solicited donations from corrupt businessmen that he had once accused of spending “dirty money” to defeat him. Strikingly, this heroic former prisoner of war, who spent five years in the Hanoi Hilton, buckled to pressure from the Bush White House and gave up his opposition to torture.
And now, he has sacrificed his principles once again. This choice was made for crass political considerations. Don’t offend the right. Try to appeal to the female voter. Pick somebody young to offset his own advanced age.
In 2000, I watched John McCain’s campaign for president in admiration. As a supporter of Al Gore, I began to worry as McCain scored upset after upset against his better financed opponent. I worried because I viewed McCain as a very strong opponent in the general election. And I worried that if McCain won the nomination, I would face a very difficult personal decision between Gore and McCain, because I thought either one of them would have made a great president. The American people spared me that choice by passing on both men in favor of a trained monkey. Back then, it would have been hard not to vote for John McCain.
Not anymore.
