Legal Commentary

Palin would give voters grounds to consider the 2008 GOP Veep nominee on more than the three traditional occasions

By Beldar

Writing in the New York Observer, Steve Kornacki methodically disputes the purported benefits that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty might bring to the second slot behind McCain on the GOP's 2008 ticket. I came away with a better impression of Gov. Pawlenty's appearance last Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" than Kornacki did ? Kornacki says his repetition of McCain talking points was "utterly formulaic," and that "on television Pawlenty looks, sounds and acts like a generic, uninspiring and thoroughly forgettable politician" ? but then again, my more positive impression may have been mostly the product of my extreme distaste for that most slippery and slimy of Democratic talking heads who was appearing opposite him, Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL).

One of Kornacki's observations, though, jumped out at me ? and indeed, struck me as being a mostly valid piece of conventional wisdom that may nevertheless not be true of all of McCain's potential Veep nominees:

Most voters will probably think about McCain?s vice presidential candidate only three times: when McCain announces his choice, when the VP candidate addresses the Republican convention, and during the VP debate in the fall.

I think those are indeed the three occasions on which most Veep nominees do get the most public attention and thought. And the corresponding piece of conventional wisdom, as a corollary to this one, is that the guiding principle of Veep selections should be to avoid a major blunder. Conventional wisdom, in other words, is very much in keeping with the opinion of FDR's one-time vice president John Nance Garner of Texas, to the general effect that the vice presidency is not worth a "warm bucket of [spit]."

But is this really true? Does it have to be true forever?

Maybe so. As things have actually turned out during my own lifetime, vice presidential nominees haven't ended up counting for much. John Edwards, picked by John Kerry as an utterly conventional choice to help carry southern states, couldn't even carry his home state in 2004 and, if anything, drove up the Democratic ticket's negatives in ways that helped produce an all-time record GOP turn-out. A recession that, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know had already ended by Election Day and the third-party candidacy of political kook Ross Perot did far more to defeat George H.W. Bush's reelection than either his own re-nomination of widely (if unfairly) lampooned Dan Quayle or Bill Clinton's pick of the cataclysmically dull Al Gore in 1992. And the Reagan-Bush ticket in 1984 would doubtless have swamped Walter Mondale even if he hadn't picked, in an obvious political ploy, a poorly vetted and objectively unqualified Geraldine Ferraro as his Veep nominee. Even as razor-close as the 2000 election was, few think that it was influenced in any meaningful way by the Cheney versus Lieberman match-up.

But maybe not. I'm thinking that all that history, and the conventional wisdom that attends it, could be overturned if McCain makes a bold choice this year. And yes, gentle readers, I'm talking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ? again. (My past pro-Palin posts, with many pix, are here, here, and here.)

Unlike Mondale's selection of Ferraro ? a congresswoman from New York whose only distinguishing credential besides her lack of a Y-chromosome was her husband's shady real estate dealings ? McCain's selection of Palin can be easily justified on grounds other than political pandering to identity politics. Simply put, Palin is one of the rising stars of the GOP without regard to her gender, but based instead on her record as a capable and articulate state chief executive ? especially with respect to energy matters, which promises to be the number one domestic issue of 2008.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).