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Ross Douthat on the future V.P.:
She's a pro-life working mom; she's tough on corruption and government waste without being a doctrinaire Norquistian on taxes; she's more supportive of gay rights than the current GOP orthodoxy (while stopping short of backing same-sex marriage); she has a more conservationist record than your typical GOP pol, but supports drilling in ANWR; she's an evangelical but she isn't a southern evangelical.
Assuming this assessment holds up until November, then Φ will carefully place his hand over the "president" column on his ballot and shade in the oval for Sarah Palin.
UPDATE:
Sailer on Palin:
In particular, she appears to have completely won the hearts of the Nerd Vote with her Tina-Fey-in-the-NRA image -- pretty girls with big guns, just like in all the movies.
Yup.
Sailer highlights Palin's record of fighting corruption, which contrasts favorably with Obama's record of jumping into the pockets of mobbed-up real estate developers.
So who is the real Obama? Is he really all about butterflies and unicorns (see the side-splitting JibJab video), a race-baiting radical, or just Dick Daley with a tan?
Probably some combination. I can't see into the man's heart, but I get the intuitive sense that he doesn't see himself as a gangster or a bomb-thrower. He's somebody appallingly naive about the world. Ayers and Dohrn? How chic! Wright? How authentic! Rezko? What a nice man to give me money! How can I do him a favor . . . .
Obama could benefit from a more pessimistic view of human nature, and moral clarity?
UPDATE 2: Half Sigma compares Mrs. Palin to Harriet Miers. I think the more apt comparison is to Jack Kemp.
I remember the flush of excitement when Kemp was nominated for vice-president in 1996. This was also considered a bold stroke at the time, but ultimately it meant nothing. Everything that Kemp was thought to stand for disappeared into the abyss of the doomed Dole campaign.
Sarah Palin ignites a similar enthusiasm, but it won't last unless she actually is allowed to bring actual policy ideas to the McCain campaign. (I'm not sure what the McCain campaign is even supposed to be about other than war, immigration, and debt.) I'm prepared to be hopeful, but I also I'm glad that it's Palin we're wasting and not someone with more long-run potential like, say, Bobby Jindal.
5 comments:
Against all statistical odds, both candidates actually picked the people I would have picked for them. Biden was an excellent choice for Obama (assuming he *had* to choose a Democrat). Sarah Palin was my dream pick for McCain (assuming he had to pick a Republican). I bet that never again happens in my lifetime. I'm still not going to vote though, but I'm relatively happy with the VP picks. Contrast this with Kerry's pick of John Edwards.
I think that Palin was a mistake. If McCain were more likely to live out his potential presidency or if Palin had been elected four years earlier she might be a good pick, but not so much this time around. I was hoping that it would be Pawlenty on the Republican side.
Biden was a better pick, though he runs the risk of embarassing everybody pretty much all of the time. I Bayh might have been a better one. On the other hand, there is something to be said for the new Cheney/Biden model of vice presidential pickery.
Good cop, bad cop you mean.
It is an interesting model. It makes a lot of sense to. Get someone who smiles real nice for president backed up by someone with "gravitas" and a willingness to be, um, abrupt at times in calling out the opposition. I think it's a good model.
A real insult comparing Palin to the ludicrous Kemp. Kemp was just a not-very-bright liberal white-guilt junkie who had an intense devotion to the "supply-side
economics" cult. His ill-deserved reputation as a GOP superstar must have had its roots in some kind of special relationship to AIPAC and the founding neocons.
Kemp has now passed into deserved obscurity, but for those who wish to know his essence:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39513
icr: I intended only a limited comparison to Kemp in the sense that Kemp in '96 ignited a conservative fanbase disappointed with the Dole nomination.
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