It was seven years ago today that Senator John McCain introduced Sarah Palin to the country as his running mate, one of the dumbest (and most disastrous) things a presidential candidate has ever done. How did it happen?
First, some history:
In 1945, President Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage; Vice President Harry Truman became president.
In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated; Vice President Lyndon Johnson became president.
In 1974, President Nixon resigned after a scandal; Vice President Gerald Ford became president.
That's three times in 70 years. We've also had a few close calls:
In 1975, President Ford was shot at on two separate occasions. If either of the shooters had had steadier hands, Ford could have died and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would have become president. (Note: this post originally said the assassination attempts were in 1974. It was actually 1975.)
In 1981, President Reagan actually was shot. He survived, but a few millimeters one way or the other could have resulted in a fatal wound and Vice President George H.W. Bush would have become president eight years earlier than he did.
In 1998, President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives. If the political winds had been blowing differently, he could have been removed from office by the Senate and Vice President Al Gore would have become president.
I provide this short history lesson to make the point that the Vice President matters, whether the president is a 72-year-old cancer survivor, as President McCain would have been, or the youngest elected president, as President Kennedy was. I'm also making the point that putting Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket was a really, really stupid thing to do.
To be clear, I don't believe the McCain campaign knowingly put a blithering idiot on the ticket. Their mistake was selecting someone they knew almost nothing about. (I've read a quote from a senior campaign official who said, and I'm paraphrasing from memory, "We assumed she had the knowledge of an average governor." Wrong. Way, way wrong.) As a woman, I'm particularly insulted by the campaign's belief that just because she was a woman, Palin would attract some of Hillary Clinton's disappointed voters. Even if Palin had turned out to be a lot smarter than she is, there's no way that Hillary's Democratic/liberal/progressive constituency would vote for a candidate with Palin's far-right ideology. And ponder this: there were no women at the highest level of the McCain campaign. If there had been one or more women in the room when the Palin decision was made, would their input have resulted in a different decision? Possibly.
So how did this come about, really? As is often the case, there's an intriguing backstory. Writer Jane Mayer tells the whole story in a New Yorker article dated October 27, 2008. You can read it here; this is the good part, starting in the summer of 2007, just a few months after Palin was inaugurated as governor:
In 1945, President Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage; Vice President Harry Truman became president.
In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated; Vice President Lyndon Johnson became president.
In 1974, President Nixon resigned after a scandal; Vice President Gerald Ford became president.
That's three times in 70 years. We've also had a few close calls:
In 1975, President Ford was shot at on two separate occasions. If either of the shooters had had steadier hands, Ford could have died and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would have become president. (Note: this post originally said the assassination attempts were in 1974. It was actually 1975.)
In 1981, President Reagan actually was shot. He survived, but a few millimeters one way or the other could have resulted in a fatal wound and Vice President George H.W. Bush would have become president eight years earlier than he did.
In 1998, President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives. If the political winds had been blowing differently, he could have been removed from office by the Senate and Vice President Al Gore would have become president.
I provide this short history lesson to make the point that the Vice President matters, whether the president is a 72-year-old cancer survivor, as President McCain would have been, or the youngest elected president, as President Kennedy was. I'm also making the point that putting Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket was a really, really stupid thing to do.
To be clear, I don't believe the McCain campaign knowingly put a blithering idiot on the ticket. Their mistake was selecting someone they knew almost nothing about. (I've read a quote from a senior campaign official who said, and I'm paraphrasing from memory, "We assumed she had the knowledge of an average governor." Wrong. Way, way wrong.) As a woman, I'm particularly insulted by the campaign's belief that just because she was a woman, Palin would attract some of Hillary Clinton's disappointed voters. Even if Palin had turned out to be a lot smarter than she is, there's no way that Hillary's Democratic/liberal/progressive constituency would vote for a candidate with Palin's far-right ideology. And ponder this: there were no women at the highest level of the McCain campaign. If there had been one or more women in the room when the Palin decision was made, would their input have resulted in a different decision? Possibly.
So how did this come about, really? As is often the case, there's an intriguing backstory. Writer Jane Mayer tells the whole story in a New Yorker article dated October 27, 2008. You can read it here; this is the good part, starting in the summer of 2007, just a few months after Palin was inaugurated as governor:
Palin
was wooing a number of well-connected Washington conservative thinkers. In a
stroke of luck, Palin did not have to go to the capital to meet these members of
“the permanent political establishment”; they came to Alaska. Shortly after
taking office, Palin received two memos from Paulette Simpson, the Alaska
Federation of Republican Women leader, noting that two prominent conservative
magazines—The Weekly Standard, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corporation, and National Review, founded by William F. Buckley,
Jr.—were planning luxury cruises to Alaska in the summer of 2007, which would
make stops in Juneau. Writers and editors from these publications had been enlisted
to deliver lectures to politically minded vacationers. “The Governor was more
than happy to meet these guys,” Joe Balash, a special staff assistant to Palin,
recalled.
Fred
Barnes recalled being “struck by how smart Palin was, and how unusually
confident. Maybe because she had been a beauty queen, and a star athlete, and
succeeded at almost everything she had done.” It didn’t escape his notice, too,
that she was “exceptionally pretty.”
By
the time the Weekly Standard pundits returned to the cruise
ship, Paulette Simpson said, “they were very enamored of her.”
The
other journalists who met Palin offered similarly effusive praise: Michael
Gerson called her “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” The most ardent
promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s
political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol
was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as
early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on
“Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of
Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could
go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary
Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a
reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator,
Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”
The
next day, however, Kristol was still talking about Palin on Fox. “She could be
both an effective Vice-Presidential candidate and an effective President,” he
said. “She’s young, energetic.” On a subsequent “Fox News Sunday,” Kristol
again pushed Palin when asked whom McCain should pick: “Sarah Palin, whom I’ve
only met once but I was awfully impressed by—a genuine reformer, defeated the
establishment up there. It would be pretty wild to pick a young female Alaska
governor, and I think, you know, McCain might as well go for it.” On July 22nd,
again on Fox, Kristol referred to Palin as “my heartthrob.” He declared, “I
don’t know if I can make it through the next three months without her on the
ticket.”
Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor at National Review, had a more elemental response. In an online column, he described Palin as “a former beauty-pageant contestant, and a real honey, too. Am I allowed to say that? Probably not, but too bad.”
A bunch of (male) conservative writers/pundits went up to Alaska and got distracted by a shiny object in a push-up bra. They made such a fuss about her that she ended up on the Republican ticket without anyone bothering to determine whether she could form a coherent sentence, much less do the job of Vice President. Would any of it have happened if Sarah Palin looked like Madeleine Albright or Janet Reno? If she hadn't been an "exceptionally pretty" beauty queen? A "real honey"? A "babe," as she was described by Rush Limbaugh? No to all of the above. A woman who isn't a "babe" would be laughed out of the room (and possibly off the ticket) after something like this:
Sarah's days as a politician are long over, notwithstanding Donald Trump's suggestion that he would put her in his cabinet. (If you think that's a realistic scenario I have two words for you: Senate Confirmation.) She's still entertaining, however, and this is almost certainly not my last post about her or her family members. Any bets on who's the father of Sarah's soon-to-be third grandchild?
Sarah's days as a politician are long over, notwithstanding Donald Trump's suggestion that he would put her in his cabinet. (If you think that's a realistic scenario I have two words for you: Senate Confirmation.) She's still entertaining, however, and this is almost certainly not my last post about her or her family members. Any bets on who's the father of Sarah's soon-to-be third grandchild?
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