Over at his blog, David Frum asks: "If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?" Of course, the question is loaded.
This small town stuff is odd to me. If a candidate is mayor of a large town, does that make her more qualified for the vice presidency or presidency? Don't we need to know more? Is Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick more qualified than any small town mayor? Is any major city mayor more qualified than any small town mayor? I suppose the question can also be asked: Is a big state governor more qualified than a small state governor, based on the size and diversity of the state alone? Or don't we need to know more? So, Frum's line about a small town mayor is by itself useless in analyzing a candidate's qualifications.
Of course, that's not what Frum was asking, not at all. Frum correctly pointed out that McCain has made "Country First" a centerpiece of his campaign, that every decision he is making and plans to make will have the country's best interests at heart. This does not remotely jibe with the selection of someone who can only charitably be described as a political neophyte.
I don't think anyone's going to let Kwame Kilpatrick near much of anything anymore, but that's also beside the point. Only a complete dipshit would think that there's no substantial difference between being (even a corrupt and incompetent) mayor of a chronically troubled major city that, despite serious population declines, is still 50% larger than Palin's entire state, and being mayor of a very small town whose mayoralty is more ceremonial than operational anyway.
So, and I'm about the last person to defend David Frum, but Levin's rebuttal completely (and deliberately) obfuscates Frum's point, rendering it meaningless with a barrage of non-sequiturs and irrelevant rejoinders. If we are facing existential doom from the Islamojihadifascistas, and if experience and judgement are paramount, then McCain has very seriously contradicted himself with his choice. Means nothing to the rest of us, since we've come to expect it, but it should mean something to them.
Hey, hey, hey! Pantload's got somethin' to say.
I've been thinking about it and I think the bottom line on Palin is pretty simple. If she does a good job at the convention and survives about three weeks of serious media scrutiny — no horrible gaffes, no unforgivable I-don't-knows to gotchya questions (fair and unfair), no botched hostile interviews — she will emerge as the single most inspired VP pick in modern memory and she will give the Democrats migraines for a long time to come, assuming there are no terrible skeletons we don't know about. But, if she screws up in the next three weeks, gives the press and the late night comedians sufficient fodder to Quayelize [sic] her, she'll be seen as anything from a liability to an outright horrible pick. That's it.
Soooo....because we already have such low expectations (which was surely part of the strategy), she can appear merely adequate and exceed those expectations. Why not? It worked for Bush, and look how well that turned out. Thanks for the penetrating insight, Lunchbox. Didn't see that one coming up the road.
Of course, like potato chips, and most other trans-fat snacks, he can't stop at just one:
But I would rather have John McCain in office for two years with Palin going to school on the job than have Barack Obama in there from day one (particularly with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid running the Congress!). I think Obama is wrong on a whole lot of things, might not be up to the job and would give a blank check to Congress. And he's the guy running for president. Palin might not be up to the job, we'll have to see, but we're not voting for her to be president (a distinction countless liberal bloggers seem intent on deliberately blurring). Obama is wrong from day 1. Palin possible right from day 1, but almost surely right on day 1,082 if, God forbid, that day comes.
His faith is impenetrable here. Notice how smoothly he moves from conceding that Palin might not be ready, but would "almost surely" be ready three years in. Note also that the questioner was asking about a scenario where McCain passes a couple months in, not two, then three years, as in Pantload's hypotheticals.
No matter. Palin's competence would not be the issue anyway. McCain, as with Bush, would "almost surely" turn his policy-making over to whatever vulcans are still skulking through the halls of the Pentagon. Cheney would be sure to leave his rolodex and cell number. The transition from McCain to Palin would be smooth as silk, because neither of them would really be in charge, except for catering to the intellectual boobism that passes for "social conservatism" in this country.
This is the problem with leaving serious choices up to self-righteous fambly-valyews toads; they bray endlessly about how serious they are, then betray their sensibilities on sight of the first shiny object dangled in front of them. Hell, even Sully the Pooh gets it, but these people are mule-stubborn and brick-thick.
And now I'm off to lunch with Kathryn.
Too easy.
Mark Steyn, who actually could write fairly coherently pre-9/11, cobbles together some talking points almost ritualistically.
Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth.
Well, and been president of the Harvard Law Review, and taught constitutional law. Not as romantic as living out Northern Exposure, I suppose, but it's something very few people can do.
Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she's been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there.
Everyone in Alaska supports drilling there; the fact that Palin's husband works for BP is just gravy. Alaska is the biggest welfare state in the union. If they didn't get their piece of the oil action there they'd be stealing moose steaks out of each other's chest freezers during yet another interminable, besotted winter.
Sixth (see Kathleen's link to Craig Ferguson below), I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe.
I like milfs as much as the next guy, and I certainly don't mind having that hot-librarian itch scratched. It would just have never occurred to me, even as a goof, to vote one into the most powerful job on the planet. Then again, I never thought enough people could be stupid enough to vote for a person such as George W. Bush. In many ways, I still can't quite believe it. It's like going to your 25-year high-school reunion, and finding out that the kid who used to eat his own boogers in class and molest farm animals on the weekends is a high-powered CEO. Oh, he still eats boogers and fucks livestock, it's just that someone actually thought he was responsible enough to manage something more complicated than getting his socks on in the morning.
Finally, Special Ed lumbers onto Hot Air to offer a point-by-point refutation of the arguments against Palin's nomination. The points themselves are easy enough to counter-refute, and not really worth the effort.
But the comments, as these things usually are, are priceless. Too many to choose from, really.
[Update: Turns out that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant. Is it a setback or a boon for those coveted valyews? Oh, the hilarity! Will they have to set up a day-care center in the Oval Office?]
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