On the foreign policy inexperience thing-- do you know how one might find out if she's EVER been overseas, in her life?

Gosh, Ezra, you sounded worried earlier. :)

I'm entirely with you, though. It's baffling until you consider that he COULDN'T pick anybody else. It's SO like Quayle '88, though at least he was in the freakin' Senate.

My take: http://mattdesmond.blogspot.com/2008/08/apologies-followed-by-sneering.html

It's called a "Hail Mary Pass", Ezra.

As a conservative, I honestly appreciate your calm, non-hyperbolic response to Palin's selection, as opposed to that of most of your ideological peers.

Let's be honest: this is a joke. She makes Quayle look massively experienced. This is an insult to anyone with half a brain.

Which isn't to say that she won't help McCain win.

Pawlenty was a lightweight.

If Pawlenty was a lightweight, then what's Palin?

Let's be honest: this is a joke. She makes Quayle look massively experienced. This is an insult to anyone with half a brain.

Which isn't to say that she won't help McCain win.

Alaska tiny?

Well said, Ezra. In general I think "experience" is way overrated and is usually just a shorthand for number of years in politics. Often this completely ignores the depth and quality of the experience for instance when Clinton claimed to have "35 years" of experience. Or when McCain is given credit for having foreign policy experience when his foreign policy views are uniformly terrible. OTOH if you're going to claim the challenges facing the next President are so monumental that Barack Obama who has spent 4 years in the U.S. Senate isn't experienced enough to face them, then it's preposterous to turn around and expect voters to buy that a 2 year governor of one of the least populated states is qualified to be vp for a 72 year old man with a history of cancer.

If Pawlenty was a lightweight, then what's Palin?
Featherweight. Though I think Pawlenty is actually a featherweight, making Palin a bantamweight.

I think she's a creationist, too.

McCain could have picked Tom Ridge if he was really a maverick. Pro-choice former Governor of PA, decorated Vietnam Vet, Secretary of Homeland Security during a time of crisis where there was no attack on the US. All of those qualities reinforce McCain and highlight differences with the Democratic ticket.

Instead the choice thing was a dealbreaker.

I never want to hear about Democrats being intolerant on the issue of choice again.

The country is supposed to overlook Palin's inexperience but the Republican Party couldn't overlook Tom Ridges views on abortion? That's not a very serious place to be for the GOP

Here's party of the reason she was a canny choice: http://www.adn.com/front/story/505651.html

This was her idea in the first place.

You can say this much, at least. She sure won't be another Dick Cheney.

Yeah, you can. In fact, I did say it. Right here on your very website. :)

ezra knocks it out of the park. Great post.

The choice thing was a key issue for why he couldn't pick an actually qualified woman, like Kay Bailey Hutchison.

So, anyway, what does everyone think the internal debates were that led to this pick. There's people like Sullivan who are saying this is McCain "going with his gut," but that seems ridiculous given that she and McCain seem to barely know each other. The from the gut pick for McCain would surely have been Lieberman, or Ridge, or someone like that. This seems like a Rove pick - mobilizes the base, very flashy in the short run, entirely political

I think she's a creationist, too.

And a former potsmoker who once veto'd an antigay law.

Great post, Ezra. A spot-on description of the issues and a superb framing for the Obama campaign going forward.

(Of course that never-ascribe-to-politics promise might be a bit constraining here.)

Alaska tiny?

I don't think vast expanses of unpopulated wilderness get to vote. Nor do they require much governing. As much as Republicans want to equate the geographic area of 'red' states with political viability, it's the population that matters, not the quantity of dirt.

Alaska tiny?

Not geographically, of course, but in population it's the fourth smallest state. That's pretty tiny, yes.

very well put.

regarding the palin pick, if bill kristol has been telling you to do something for several weeks, does it still get to be called mavericky?

As much as Republicans want to equate the geographic area of 'red' states with political viability, it's the population that matters, not the quantity of dirt.

And it's the population from those red states and how that population votes that gives them political viability in our electoral system. This knee jerk reaction to throw the populations from such rural areas out as unserious peoples is what makes us lose even the leftists who live there politically. That's what people mean when they yell "elitist". But, hey, you know - it's not like we'll need them to help Obama reach across the aisle and get the real work done or anything.

McPain-Mail-in.

This is clearly a Rove pick, though.

The experience line is a tricky one. Biden is going to need a month of coaching to avoid either looking condescending or pulling his punches. The fact that Palin is governor because Frank Murkowski was a corrupt bastard, just as Don Young and Ted Stevens are corrupt bastards.

I still think Obama needs to go to Alaska and campaign. Having Palin on the ticket shores up the vote there to some extent, but there's not going to be a better time to take a chunk out of the state's Congressional delegation.

A couple of points:

1. First off, contrary to what I've read opined in a few other places, this VP choice does not "take the spot-light off" last night's success...In fact, juxtaposed next to McCain's pick, it actually enhances last night result...Wonderful...

2. You just gotta love a pick that the minute you hear it, you hope it isn't a prank...I was running from site to site hoping that it wasn't just some last-second trial balloon floated by those clowns...Seriously, I can't tell you what a joy it was hen this thing was confirmed...I couldn't believe I was actually watching it (which makes it twice that has happened in the last 12 hours, because last night I couldn't believe that after eight long years of pent-up frustration, I was finally actually watching someone unload on the corrupt incompetents we've been subjected to for so long...

3. This was a just a horrible, horrible pick...Why not KB Hutchinson or the Gov of CT?...Mayor of the village she grew up in (how much time has she spent on the lower 48 --- probably a combined total of 100 days or so her whole life)...She sounds like a character out of Northern Exposure that Maurice Minnefield would have been friends with because she hates gays and wants to drill for oil all over the place...

4. Just what is the RNC going to look like next week?...Labor Day (nobody's watching), Bush on Tuesday and Palin on Wednesday...With a hurricane about to hit New Orleans again...

5. I can't effing believe this...Delicious....

I'm a committed Obama voter, but there's something I don't get. Don't most of the arguments against Palin's inexperience work against Obama too?

I think this hits it exactly right: as with just about anything on the right wing, they think about politics, not governance.

The Obama campaign should really make the most of this message. The VP's most important job is to be ready to be President - in short, each candidate is picking the very next best person to be President. I think it does say a lot about judgment that Obama thinks Joe Biden, with 30+ years experience in the Senate, and enormous foreign policy experience is the next best person to be president. John McCain evidently thinks that a woman who, 19 months ago was mayor of a town of 5,500 is the very next best person qualified to be president.

People can make their own judgments about whether this former beauty queen is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

What Obama supporters should be focusing on is this: it is now clear that McCain is lying when he talks about how Obama is too inexperienced to be C-in-C.

Let's see, Palin was mayor of a 6,000-person town and now is governor of a 700,000-person state where the legislature only meets for 90 days a year.

Adrian Fenty spent six years representing the 75,000 residents of DC's Ward 8, and now has been mayor (effectively a governor, since there's no separate state government) of 600,000 people for 1.5 years.

It's amazing how many people Republicans are now saying are ready to become commander in chief at a moment's notice.

Kuri: Obama has spent a lot of time now developing national policies, foreign and domestic. Palin, very very little. I think that's a real difference.

Two thoughts:

1) Can anyone think of any (Democratic) women mayors of mid-size (>683,000) cities? I'm sure there must be; I just don't know my mayors that well. The point being that a woman who could say "I have more constituents than Sarah Palin" could be a really effective surrogate in defining her.

2) Troopergate could have an impact, but only if it gets wide play within the next news cycle or two. If one of the first things people hear about her is her involvement in an abuse-of-power scandal, that'll diminish her value to the ticket. But of course it's up to us to keep the heat on the press over this one.

My Mike Coleman would be ten times the president Sarah Palin would be, and a hundred times John McCain.

Streetcars FTW.

"That's what people mean when they yell 'elitist'. But, hey, you know - it's not like we'll need them to help Obama reach across the aisle and get the real work done or anything."

Many smaller population states have a lot in common, and can be seen as forming a bloc.

So your point about large, low population states being a part of something larger, and sharing similar issues, would be a fair one...

... if it weren't for the fact that Alaska has barely anything in common with any other state. Natural resources (primarily oil), government spending on services, and fisheries: that's it. No other industries to speak of.

Oil-rich states like Texas and Louisiana have much more diverse economies. Cultivation, or profitable ranching, is NOT POSSIBLE in Alaska. It's not a farm state.

The closest comparison could be made to mineral-rich western mountain states like Montana and Wyoming, or Pacific Northwest contiguous states, but again, there is economic diversity in those states.

Alaska is sui generis. It barely has anything in common with the west (in case "western governor" comes up). This translates, geography-wise, to nothing.

""in a tiny, remote state. It's just a bit...odd.""""

Too funny, didn't you just get done telling us how tiny geographically Iran is to Russia?

Alaska? A tiny state?

I think its a little bit bigger then Obamas Senate Office.

It borders Russia, it has 670,000 inhabitants.

Palin has 8,500 state employees.

Baracks Senate office employs 35 people.

This pick screams tokenism--something Republicans are supposed to oppose. Is there anybody out there who thinks she would have gotten the nod were it not for her gender? Can anybody imagine McCain choosing a man with a resume similar to Palin's?

It will get him some attention for a day or two but, in the end, it shows McCain for the pure, cynical pol that he is.

Sheila Dixon (Baltimore mayor) and Sharon Pratt Kelly (former DC mayor) are in the population ballpark.

Country did not come first. Polls did.

Or perhaps the conservative base. Those nutty right-wingers that, for the most part, seem to love the Palin pick, and without home even John McCain has apparently realized he doesn't have a prayer of winning without.

Might be wrong. I suppose the polls will show whether I am or not in a few days. But I think Palin was a great pick, and attempting to attack her on her experience, given she's the only person in the campaign to spend any time in an executive position seems weak, to me, though it wasn't a lot of time. She's got a great story, she gives a great acceptance speech (as far as us folks on the right are concerned) and she hunts, fishes, blew some whistles, slapped back that porky birdge-to-nowhere Ted Stevens was on about, and so on.

This helps McCain with the base on so many levels. And, frankly, some of us are enamored enough of her politics that we think McCain is doing conservatism a big favor, elevating her to the national stage.

Another sign that she was a great pick: how much so many liberals don't like her. Not that they would have liked Joe Leiberman or Tom Ridge . . .

And Obama is already arguing against Palin's experience in the VP slot, vs. his as the pre-ordained president. Not sure if that's smart or not. "His veep choice barely has more experience than me" is not terribly persuasive.

I guess we'll know for sure in November.

the only person in the campaign to spend any time in an executive position

How does it make sense to make an argument implying that McCain himself isn't qualified to be president?

Another sign that she was a great pick: how much so many liberals don't like her.

I think McCain already has the voters motivated entirely by resentment of liberals sewn up. The swing voters have more important concerns than using the office of vice president as a way to give the finger to their fellow citizens.

Chris O,
That's indeed a point in Obama's favor. Thanks.

I think this choice could backfire enormously, simply because the only legitimate "character" issue working against Obama is his lack of experience ("legitimate" in the sense that I'll vote for him in November, but it still concerns me). Now that McCain's running mate is at least as inexperienced, how can they possibly use that against him?

Columbus proper is actually 25% larger (population wise) than the State of Alaska. The Central Ohio Metro region is home to nearly 2 million.

I agree that Mayor Coleman is ready to be president. ;)

Like all the left told us about Bill Clinton, as Governor, he was Commander of the Guard, Just like Palin is the Commander of the Alaskan National Guard.

The Alaskan Guard is not just deployed in the GWOT, but they regularly deploy inside Alaska to rescue people, they have 77 armories and have their own air forces.

Palin regards taking the plane to New York as a mission to a foreign country. How would she deal with Putin if McCain snuffed it?

McCain has effectively cut off his entire offensive against Obama: that he is too inexperienced to run for office. Obama can keep on attacking McCain and linking him to Bush's policies, while McCain has to start from scratch to offer and entire new offense.

Q? - Mr McCain, is Sarah Palin qualified to be Commander in Chief?

A? - Think about it, there is no good answer for McCain.

And as for executive experience, Alaska has not provided her with any applicable budgeting experience; she has only had to figure out how to deal with a surplus. Not exactly the experience we need in DC right now.

Looks like Ms. Palin's image as a "reformer" isn't going to get a whole lot of tread;

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014466.php

I am really interested in the VP debate, now. I want to see Biden get some really specific answers out of Palin on the subject of dinosaurs being a myth.

I like this post. I've been seeing a lot of generic frothing at the mouth, and Mitt Romney and Joe Lieberman would have deserved it. I don't see that Sarah Palin deserves it. In the grand scheme of things, she hasn't been one of the worst offenders--she's not some kind of snarling witch, and this knee jerk campaign to make her into one is sort of tiresome.

What she is, and this is absolutely true, is breathtakingly inexperienced for this particular role. Obama may lack time in a formal role at the next highest level of the political hierarchy, but it's clear that he's been planning and moving and thinking in national terms for a while--and while people make that out to be overly ambitious, that's not all a bad thing. A president should be someone who wanted to be president--it would be a thankless job otherwise.

The most devastating critique is the truth--she's not ready to be president. It doesn't make her evil incarnate. It just makes her the wrong choice, and makes John McCain's judgement suspect once again.

Palin has a lot of admirable qualities. I overall like her.

Tough question for McCain though: Sen. McCain, was Gov. Palin the most qualified person you could have chosen for your Vice President?

Shirley Franklin of Atlanta is another female Democratic mayor of a large city.

Still, the inexperience meme on Palin is not going to cut it and I don't think the Obama camp is likely to try it out. They'll go after her as a radical conservative extremist if they have to, but they'll keep their powder dry until she herself goes on the attack against either Biden or Obama. They have to let her draw first blood or they will look mean.

Shirley Franklin, mayor of Atlanta, reigns over a larger city than Alaska, no?

And Democrats have Gregoire, Granholm (not constitutionally allowed, I know), Sibelius, and Napolitano in charge of fairly big states. Heck Joe Biden's governor is a Democratic woman.

Why would Obama attack her as inexperienced? The point is that McCain can't attack Obama as inexperienced now. The only lines he had that were working: inexperience and celebrity. And he shot himself in the foot on both counts with this one. Well played, McCain, well played.

It's weird, maybe an impulsive Rovian strike they didn't think through enough. I think most voters and commentators will go through a few steps as below, and this will not turn out well for John McCain:

1. Ask, and maybe even him directly too: Would John McCain have picked Sarah Palin if, having all the same background, she wasn't a woman? No, really, of course not - some guy like that just wouldn't have been the Veep choice "and we all know it." So,

2. That shows that John McCain was pandering, trying to pull a "See what a cute smart-ass I am, diddling with Hillary supporters and sticking my tongue out at Barack Obama." My mother said, he "looked pleased as punch," with a big smug smart-Alec's smirk on his face.

3. Once voters realize that John McCain was pandering like that, taking chances with the well-being of the nation just to play election games, enough of them will be outraged enough to say, no way I will vote for a prick like that.

It would have been no problem if McCain had picked a clearly talented woman with more experience and some fopo contact, like Olympia Snowe.
(Ezra, why didn't you mention those more qualified women?)

What she is, and this is absolutely true, is breathtakingly inexperienced for this particular role.

That's true, but I don't think that covers it. She's a real fundie, as far as I can tell -- that is, a creationist & pro-lifer (with a little NRA on top for good measure). My hostility to politicians who don't acknowledge empirical reality is pretty deep. It doesn't make her a bad person (I have known some really nice fundies), but it should make her unqualified to be president.

Sorry, people - if you don't believe in science, you shouldn't be anywhere near nuclear weapons, just for starters. That points merits some frothing at the mouth.

Harvey, did you ever meet your cousin, "the medium lobster"?

Heh. And there's this video of Rove:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-jrk2e0MMs

Harvey, did you ever meet your cousin, "the medium lobster"?

No, but thanks for making me google that - I wish we *were* cousins.

Wasn't there a TV movie about her? "Sarah Palin and Tall," with Glenn Close?

Obama supporters are always trying to give the false impression that Obama has soooo many people who want him … but, in reality, in both the primaries, and in this general election, Obama cannot get more than half of the voters. Regarding the grandiose convention … the 80,000 audience were loyal democrats, who were already for Obama, before the event even began. Actually, Palin has more experience and qualifications than Obama. Obama was a community organizer, with no executive experience, who has spent most of his short term as a senator, running for President. Palin already stood up to special interests and big oil companies, while Obama has not shown any kahonies yet. If Palin could get 90% of the women's vote, because she is a woman ... just like Obama gets 90% of the black vote, because he is black ... it would be good for our country.

Wow, Anonymous, you really don't get it. Obama isn't getting 90% of the African American vote, just because he's black -- it's because they like his policies and his character. I can guarantee you that if Clarence Thomas was running for President, he'd be lucky to get 10% of the African American vote. Same goes for women. I'm a progressive Democrat, and there's no way I'd vote for Sarah Palin just because she's a woman. I didn't even vote for Hilary in the primaries. I wanted the best person for the job, and when that's a woman, I'll vote for her gladly. But not until then.

"Alaska tiny?"

Yes. Tiny. As in, tiny population. As in, only Vermont and North Dakota have fewer people. As in, Metro D.C. has almost as many.

Tiny. Like the brain of an ostensibly intelligent person who thinks that kids in public school should be taught biblical creationism.

You know. Tiny.

Correction. Wyoming also has fewer people than Alaska. But a lot more sheep.

Pawlenty was a lightweight.

If Pawlenty was a lightweight, then what's Palin?

Lightweight is actually the exact midpoint of the boxing weight classes, with eight classes above it and eight classes below it. So there is a broad range of possibilities where Palin might fit.

She's obviously not the lowest, mini-flyweight. Maybe she was that when she was merely on the podunk town council.

But then she became the podunk town mayor! Junior flyweight, at least.

And governor? Yeah, it's only been less than two years, and yeah, it's only of a state that has about as many people as a third-tier city, but hey, it's still governor! That's still pretty impressive. Sort of.

I'd say that skips her right over flyweight and junior bantamweight in one fell swoop, all the way to bantamweight.

http://www.wowpowerleveling.me

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