Picking Sarah Palin Undermined McCain’s ‘Country First’ - by Louis J. Sutton

There is a lot I admire about John McCain. Following his presidential campaign as well as reflecting on him since brings up some honourable achievements.  Along with being a war veteran, McCain most notably defended Obama against racial abuse from audience members in a town hall style meeting. He also showed immense reluctance to run a ‘negative campaign’ against Barrack Obama. More recently he has been pushing for a motion to reduce the importance of money in political elections, something Obama seems to be neglecting, as well as encouraging good bipartisan relationships between the two parties.

Despite this, the announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate on the 29^th of August 2008 has nothing admirable about it.

Why did John McCain pick Sarah Palin?

In my mind, his choice had everything to do with the campaign and not even remotely related to ‘country first’, his own campaign slogan. Strategically, Palin was near perfect. She drew in Hilary supporters and gave the Republican Party a female friendly face, meanwhile appealing to the Tea Party and the right-wing of the GOP. Up until her expensive clothing scandal, Palin had given out the image as an everyday hockey mum people could relate to; almost ideal.

However, when thinking about a VP choice, a nominee must consider how they offer not only a strategic advantage in the campaign, but expertise in the white house, McCain neglected the latter. Although some seem Palin's gaffes as simple mistakes, I think when compiled it becomes clear she wasn’t up the job.

This was the conclusion given to McCain by those vetting Palin for VP.

"Democrats upset at McCain's anti-Obama 'celebrity' advertisements will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News expressed concern that she often seemed 'unprepared or over her head' in a campaign run by a friend."

The vetting process was evidently brief as it fails to mention her significant lack of foreign policy knowledge, something Joe Biden excelled at. These Clips should show her utter lack of understanding about Foreign Policy.

Although I acknowledge that the vetting process was brief and that with prior knowledge Palin would not have been on his ticket I still see it as utterly irresponsible on behalf of McCain. Not only was she weak in her understanding of foreign policy, but she would have been one step away from being the most power person in the world, something which to my eyes is inconceivable.

I must recommend the film Game Change. It gives more insights into some of her terrible blunders, while giving a good overview of the campaign process. Steve Schmidt (McCain’s operations manager during the campaign) said the film tells "the truth of the campaign”, making it definitely worth a watch.

by Louis Sutton - 1st November 2013

The Tea Party and Republicanism 2010

According to this piece on the political blog The Hill, the primary voting season has shown the power of Sarah Palin, the Tea-Party's first lady and former governor of Alaska, on the political scene. Specifically candidates who she has supported in the run-up to the November mid-terms have been successful, and notably more right-wing than the candidates they beat.

The ins-and-outs of this won't be especially useful for G&P students, except that it'll be interesting to note what happens in November, especially if Obama supporters stay away from the polls.

Of note for anyone contemplating the direction of the Republican party is the news that former political renegade and maverick John McCain kept his seat in Alaska because he supported positions more right-wing, especially on immigration, than he has previously.

Another interesting development is that because of the generally anti-politician feeling in the states, there are politicians attempting to be different. Marco Rubio, a Republican Senate seat nominee is doing this by avoiding the Tea Party and having an actual set of policies he would like to put into practice when in office. The comment by the Economist's Democracy in America blog is pretty scathing about his policies for which the numbers don't add up:

It's true that advancing policy proposals is more courageous than running on facile outrage: having an agenda courts the risk that people will take your agenda apart. Nonetheless, I don't find it convincing to praise Mr Rubio simply for having put forward an agenda. The problem remains that Mr Rubio suffers from a fundamental malady that afflicts the entire tea-party movement. Tea-partiers who believe that the federal government must dramatically cut its budget deficit remain resolutely unwilling to draw the inevitable conclusion: either taxes must go dramatically up, or major, popular federal programmes (defence, Social Security, Medicare) must be dramatically cut. One thing we should have learned from the 2000 elections, and the budgetary debacles that have followed, is that an unwillingness to make the numbers in your proposals add up is a character flaw of the first order.

The other way is being the non-politician's politician and telling anyone who'd listen that you will not doing negative campaigning (i.e. attacking the character and policies of your opponent). For an example of the genre, take a look at the ad by Colorado Democratic-governor candidate John Hickenlooper:



As a rejoinder to that, here is a piece by CBS news about negative campaigning from John McCain in the 2008 presidential race:



All of which is useful stuff for anyone contemplating the impact of pressure groups on parties (or even of factions within parties), elections, and the policies of the Republican party.

US tax & the Tea Party

Interesting stuff about America's attitude to its own exceptionalism and greatness here in The Economist's Lexington column. Interesting stuff, especially about the role of government and spending which has a connection to the problems faced by President Obama.

The Onion has a funnier and clearer take on all of this here in an article titled "Nation demands tax dollars only be wasted on stuff which is awesome".

Another Lexington blog has an interesting take on US politics and it's style here (summary: the different sides really DO hate eachother). Yet another Lexington column makes a good point about the Tea Party (vilified by its enemies as a bunch of racists):

Though I don't share their politics, tea-partiers are mostly decent folk legitimately alarmed by what is happening to the economy and therefore to their own lives. Here in Arizona that includes a sudden collapse in the value of their homes in a state that has gone through a grotesque property-fuelled boom and bust.

Again, we'll see what happens to the Republicans and Democrats and the Tea-Partyers at the mid-terms. If it's any guide, former liberal Republican John McCain has tacked hard to the right to save his seat from a Republican opponent in his Arizona primary, as discussed here and here