"An Eagleton Scenario"

Last night I invoked the name of George McGovern's disastorous 1972 VP selection, Senator Thomas Eagleton. Matt Yglesias channeling his inner me this morning,

...normally VP choices don’t make much of a difference politically, but a VP candidate with no experience dealing with the national media who the candidate himself has barely spoken to risks an Eagleton Scenario.

The more one thinks about the pick the more frightening it becomes. McCain apparently believes he is hiring an intern,

"[Sarah Palin is] going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he'll be around at least that long," said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain's top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain's health, which Mr. McCain's doctors reported as excellent in May.

The Palin pick is absolutely indefensible except when viewed purely as a cynical political play for women voters and the far-right Christian base.

John McCain has demonstrated once again that despite all of his experience he has tragically poor judgment. Palin is not a serious candidate for VP and will place this country at great peril should the McCain/Palin ticket somehow wins this election.

Steve Benen has a good round up of what some on the right are saying in brief moments of honesty. Even the flacks on the right realize that this is little more than a desperate political gambit with no thought whatsoever towards governing or the fate and security of the country. This quote from National Review's Kathyrn Jean-Lopez is pretty telling,

As much as I loathe Obama-Biden, I can't in good conscience vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. Palin has absolutely no experience in foreign affairs. Considering both McCain's advanced age and the state of the world today, it is essential that the veep be exceedingly qualified to assume the office of president. I simply don't have any confidence in Palin's ability to deal effectively with Iran, Russia, China, etc.

Lopez is ordinarily one of the GOP's biggest cheerleaders. She's also a conservative Catholic. Exactly the type of voter that the Palin pick should appeal to and yet Lopez now says that she cannot vote for the GOP ticket because of the selection of Palin.

After spending the better part of the 21st century riling up the base with talk of a decades long war with radical Islam and attacking Democrats as fatally weak and unserious on national security even the GOP base is going to have a hard time swallowing the Palin selection.

As far as strategy for the Obama campaign I largely agree with the first line of thought expressed here, at least for the time being,

So the smart move here would be to largely ignore her and focus the attention on McCain. Vice-presidential picks, although they generate a lot of media hype, do not end up deciding presidential races.

This pick is so obviously terrible that the media will do a lot of the heavy lifting for the Obama campaign. We don't even need to lead those horses to water, they're already drinking. As the media digs into her past and the brief honeymoon news cycle ends Palin will then have to stand up to the rigors of the national press for the first time. The odds of her coming through the first 2 to 3 weeks unscathed are minimal at best.

At the same time Hillary Clinton just became Barack Obama's most important surrogate. The Palin selection is so completely patronizing towards women voters generally and Hillary supporters specifically that I don't think there will be any problem motivating the junior Senator from New York to level blistering attacks against Palin.

Now as to the question of the importance of VP picks I generally agree with the assessment that they don't matter much but I don't think we're playing by the standard rules in this case.

For one thing John McCain is a 72 year old cancer survivor. His VP selection is critically important given his age and health concerns. Picking someone so clearly unqualified puts the issues of age and health into the political discourse in a way that they were not before.

Secondly, most Presidential candidates do not select VP candidates who undercut their entire campaign narrative - experience, leadership on the most foreign policy important issues of our day. Palin lays waste to the experience canard. I was watching television last night and the various anti-Obama experience ads kept popping up. They seem patently ridiculous now given the Palin selection, their effectiveness is completely gone. From an article in Politico today*,

“I think we’re going to have to examine our tag line, ‘dangerously inexperienced,’” a top McCain official said wryly.

With the Palin selection the McCain campaign has ceded the high ground that their experience attacks were giving them.

Finally, it's clear that McCain's camp has not done any serious vetting of Palin. No one really knows what sort of land mines lay out there. The reason most VP picks are inconsequential in the long run is because most VP picks are well-vetted known entities who are chosen, first and foremost, because they will do no harm to the campaign. Palin was chosen as a deliberate gamble, a political Hail-Mary. The McCain campaign has their fingers crossed that this pick won't absolutely explode in their face.

The Palin selection is one generally without precedence, one cannot view this pick through the normal course of VP selections. The only selection that is remotely analogous to this one is the Eagleton pick of 1972. I don't think John McCain's campaign is another George McGovern but his selection of Palin has made it pretty likely that McCain will become another Bob Dole.


*ht to Danny the Red Hair
Cross-Posted at Colorado Pols