The Choice of Sarah Palin

Senator John McCain (presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee) chose Governor Sarah Palin (R Alaska) as his running mate. Why is this important?

It’s not, really. As Andy pointed out some months ago, Black, White, Male, Female are not requirements to hold office. There are requirements and the Constitution dictates that an individual has to be (at least) 35 to hold that office, a citizen who was born in this country (McCain was born in a protectorate in case anyone wanted to know to military father and mother), and win enough votes to secure the electoral vote. As a result, if we accept that gender and race and religious views are not prerequisites for office, than the selection of Sarah Palin is insignificant and does not matter.

However, why it does matter and what does make it significant is that she is the first woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate on a Republican ticket and regardless of what happens in this election, we will either have a black (bi-racial actually) president or a female vice-president and in either case, this is historically the first time this has ever happened. Granted, Geraldine Ferraro ran as the vice-presidential running mate to Walter Mondale and they lost (I am convinced that was a throw away election for the Dem’s), which did only one thing and made Ferraro a household name for some people. She was actually a supporter of Clinton during the primaries and had to resign due to some comments she made about Obama.

Regardless, what McCain the Maverick has declared is not that he is significant or that his policies are better than anyone else or that he is better, but that one way or another and regardless of who the American people are going to choose a candidate who will make history and will do something no one has ever done before. Of course, if you really look at this, the only real significant achievement in the past 18 months is all on the side of the Democrats who not only ran a primary campaign that whittled itself down to two individuals, but that those two individuals were black and female (respectively). In essence, what McCain the Maverick is saying about his choice in running mate is directly related to the Democratic primaries where Clinton and Obama went head to head and in either case made a much broader and larger historical footnote than McCain’s choice in vice-president.

Though, with that said, Sarah Palin is not insignificant. Why? Well, she is the governor of Alaska. Granted, that is a very large (land mass) state, with a very small population. She is not significant because of her position or because of the size of the state or because she would help ensure a number of electoral votes, but rather because she is the governor over a state with a place called ANWR (Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge) where the Republican’s, and by popular and croaniesque extension, McCain the Maverick, want to pass laws that would allow for the exploration for and drilling of oil. Oil, then, becomes one reason we can assume McCain the Maverick has decided he needed this particular governor to be his running mate.

What is interesting is not that she is woman, not that she is a governor, not her age (which is about the same as Obama), and not that she does something inherently historical, but that she is the governor over a traditionally conservative state that has national resources the Republican’s want to exploit (and I would love to see them tapped in to, especially if it will guarantee lower gas prices at the pump, though this decision will not sway my choice), and McCain the Maverick wants some leverage there.

But that’s not the only reason he chose Sarah Palin. Nope. He chose her because he wants to directly court the Hillary Clinton contingency of voters who claim they will never vote for Obama and he wants to give those women and men a choice where they could support a first for women in this country by voting for a woman as vice-president (by extension since we no longer directly vote for the vice-president). What this means, for those who care or want to keep track, is that if something were to happen to McCain the Maverick and he could no longer fulfill the duties in the office of the president, then a woman would be made the first president of the United States and that is a coup that is too good to pass up.

Consider, if you were a Hillary supporter during the primaries and you claimed you would never vote for Obama because he was not Hillary and you realize that McCain the Maverick has a tradition of leaning toward the left and working more with the Democrats than his own party, and you have the choice of voting for Obama, who you said you would not vote for, or McCain and a woman, who do you vote for?

Chances are Obama, but there is a significant number of women who are just enough activist minded and who are only concerned with a woman gaining a high office that McCain the Maverick will attract a percentage of voters away from the Democratic side onto his side simply because having a woman as vice-president is a huge leap forward.

The outcome, then, is not that McCain the Maverick is really doing something historical as realizing that two things both have to be true:

1. He needs to secure the strong possibility that he can lower gas prices and remove American reliance on foreign oil and to do that he has to have the support of the people of Alaska to succeed;
2. He needs to attract a significant number of Hillary’s ardent supporters to his side of the supposed ideological divide that will also vote for him to topple the Obama juggernaut.

As a result, he did exactly what he needed to do. Romney and Giuliani are both weights he cannot shrug off. Both are party loyalists and both (right now) want to be considered for future elections; but neither are good running mates. Especially after the beating Huckabee and the Southern Evangelicals put upon Romney and the sound beatings everyone gave to Giulani during the primaries. Huckabee is too much of an Evangelical to make a good case for vice-president and as a result, he is dismissed out of hand; especially when he insisted the fight continue even after it was VERY clear he could not win. Huckabee is a lot like Hillary in that sense where it would’ve been absolutely impossible to have as a running mate because of the nature and tone of the primaries.

The outcome in all of this is to go outside of the current circle, determine what needs to be accomplished, identify the people who are best able to help with that, and then find the person with the best experience and young enough to attract the youth vote, and tap that person.

All McCain has done is dictate what direction he is going in. And even though this will be a groundbreaking election cycle regardless of what happens, it is for significantly different reasons than you may, on the surface, suppose.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

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