President Palin

The bullshit factor of American politics never ceases to amaze me. More and more, I'm realizing that no one actually believes anything they say about the other side. It's all about tricking people, the easily persuaded American sheep who listen to radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, into doing what you want. And it's gotten to the point where they're barely hiding it anymore.

The latest example of this involves McCain's pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. For the past three months (and even before, if you count the Democratic Primaries), I've been listening to McCain criticize Barack Obama for being too inexperienced to be President. Paper thin resume, he said. Not qualified to be "Commander in Chief," he said. To be fair, it wasn't just McCain saying this. Hillary Clinton, his own VP pick Joe Biden, and numerous self-loving talking heads on Fox and CNN said the same thing. And I considered it to be fair criticism. Obama's assent has been rapid, and it's a legitimate knock to say he doesn't have enough political experience to be President, even though I've always felt the criticism was overblown. If that's how you feel and it's all you care about, my view was, go ahead and vote for McCain.

Well you can throw that out the window now. McCain, who is 72 years old, just chose as his running mate a woman with exactly two years of political experience. And we're not talking experience in a state like New York or California or even Pennsylvania. We're talking Alaska, of all places ALASKA. Alaska is a huge territory but it has like 5 people living in it. It can hardly be said that Alaska represents the United States. And Palin's last significant political position before becoming governor TWO YEARS AGO was her service as mayor of a small-ass podunk town. Before that, she was a news anchor. And McCain was criticizing Obama's lack of political experience? What a joke.

I have nothing against Sarah Palin. In fact, I kind of like her. She's got that down home thing going, which American voters seem to like in their leaders. She seems genuine and nice. And I like the way she stuck the Bridge to Nowhere up Senator Ted Stevens' wrinkled ass. She's easy on the eyes, too. I don't like her political views (she thinks both evolution and creationism, i.e. intelligent design, should be required to be taught in school, for example), but she's not abrasive and has a bright future in the GOP. But are you kidding me? Vice-President???

McCain, God bless him, has been diagnosed with cancer four times. If elected, he'll be the oldest person ever elected President of the United States. I heard Doris Kearns Goodwin say today on Meet the Press that nearly 1 in 3 American Vice-Presidents have become President through assassination, illness, or resignation. With this pick, that's scary to think about. McCain and his minions have spent the better part of his campaign against Obama criticizing his lack of experience. And then he goes and picks as his number two someone who has even LESS experience than Obama? Either he never meant what he was saying about Obama or he is in serious panic mode in this election, because this pick was about as knee-jerk as you can get. You can say it doesn't matter. You can say the Palin pick "energized" his campaign. You can say that chances are, McCain will be fine and he's only running for a 4-year term anyway. But we have two wars going on and an economy that's in the shitter and this is the best he could do? It wouldn't matter if McCain was 50 or 60 or even 65, but the man is in his 70s for crying out loud. It's fair to say that this situation poses a more likely than typical scenario that McCain either will not live out his term, or could be sidelined for a substantial portion of it. Does President Palin have a nice ring to it for you? Not for me. And more importantly, what does this pick say about McCain's judgment?

Before picking her, McCain met Palin exactly twice. Why was she chosen? And how much involvement did McCain have in that choice? I can hear it now: "We need someone young, preferably female, who's pro-life, evangelical, and likes to shoot guns. Get on it!" This pick was like ordering a pizza. It's the way most people date on Match.com: pick all the personality traits you want in a person and then click on the picture you like the most. Scary. There were a bevy of Republicans, including women, who were more qualified VP picks than Palin. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Liz Dole, Tom Ridge, even Governor Huckleberry were more qualified. What was McCain thinking? He couldn't find a conservative woman with a more substantial resume than a two-year governor of a sparsely-populated state? This pick gets him no electoral states that he wasn't getting already, no security if something happens to him, and no one knowledgeable on the economy, like Romney would have been, though Palin does have some experience on the energy front. All this pick did was perk up some conservatives and solidify McCain's evangelical support. I submit that the Republican Convention and almost any other pick besides Lieberman would have accomplished the same thing.

McCain's bad judgment isn't my only point here, though. My larger point is about political hypocrisy. I've been laughing my ass off the past two days watching the political shows and seeing the very same conservative pundits who'd been criticizing Obama as inexperienced -- THE SAME EXACT PEOPLE -- bending over backwards, stttttreeeetccccching the facts about Palin's experience to somehow justify this crazy pick. Their response to her clear lack of international experience (did I hear correctly that she got her first U.S. passport in 2007?): she's an "executive" who's "tough" and "very popular" in Alaska. One jackass on Fox News actually tried to suggest that Palin had international experience because Alaska is very close to Russia. It's a fucking farce. Can you imagine this woman facing down Putin or bin Laden if something happens to McCain? Shit, call Obama inexperienced, but at least he's a Senator of a major American State who has a national presence and clear positions on foreign policy, even if you disagree with them. And any lingering doubts most people could have had on this front had to have been addressed by Obama's pick of Joe Biden. Palin is going to have to prepare for her debate against Biden like a college senior cramming for a final.

As a Democrat and Obama-supporter, I'm thrilled with McCain's choice, because it's an act of desperation and shows that McCain thinks things through about as much the Republican he's trying to replace: George Bush. Actually, credit to Bush, at least he picked Cheney, who, as much as I hate the fucker, actually had some foreign policy experience under his belt. If something happened to Bush, I wasn't worried that we had another Dan Quayle on our hands. But that's exactly what Palin is: Dan Quayle 2.0.

I don't know what McCain was thinking, but if he wins, he'd better stay healthy, or I'm getting the hell out of Dodge and moving to..... ALASKA.