Sarah Palin: Unfit for Command

John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is being touted by conservative cognoscenti as a brilliant political maneuver, but it could wind up biting the maverick Arizona senator on the bottom.

At a news conference in Dayton, Ohio on August 29, 2008, McCain announced that he had tapped Ms. Palin for the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket. Sarah Palin will be the first Republican woman to run for the vice presidency. McCain had closely guarded the identity of his running mate. The historic event sent political shock waves around the United States and forced Barack Obama from the media spotlight. A day earlier, Obama had made his own history by being the first black man to accept the presidential nomination of a major political party, an event which coincided with the forty-fifth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech.

Sarah Palin, 44, was elected governor of Alaska in 2006. Before being elevated to the governorship, Ms. Palin served two terms as a member of the Wasilla City Council and two terms as mayor of Wasilla. Wasilla is a suburb of Anchorage. According to the Wasilla City Website, Wasilla has a population of 6,715.

Governor Palin is the mother of five children. Her youngest, Trig, an infant, has Down's syndrome. Her oldest, Track, a 19-year-old army infantryman, is scheduled to be deployed in Iraq on September 11, 2008.

In an effusive profile, The New York Post notes that Ms. Palin is an avid hunter, runs three miles a day, and has worked with her husband Todd in his commercial fishing business. Ms. Palin was also a high school basketball star, and in 1984, placed second in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant.

As Alaska's governor, Palin has rooted out corruption in her own party, developed oil and natural gas resources, and been fiscally conservative. She is staunchly pro-life and has an approval rating of about 80 percent.

Some liberal commentators and members of the Obama team have ridiculed Sarah Palin. That was a big mistake. Palin is a rising political star and a formidable campaigner with a compelling personal story. She's attractive, wholesome, and charming. Her appearance on the Republican ticket may be enough to defeat Team Obama.

But it could just as easily blow up in McCain's face. The problem with the selection of Sarah Palin is that it's a nakedly political pick. Let's be honest. If Sarah Palin were a 60-year-old guy, McCain would never have considered her. Nor would Palin have been on McCain's radar if she weren't a governor. Less than two years of experience in high office is an astoundingly slim reed for a major presidential candidate to hang his hopes on. If Governor Palin were well into her second or third term with a record similar to her strong start, I'd have a different opinion.

As good a governor as Palin may be, she has not been around long enough for anyone to be certain whether she is Oval Office material. Eliot Spitzer became governor of New York in 2007. He, too, had a reformist agenda. For awhile, Spitzer's approval rating exceeded 70 percent. But 15 months into his first term, he had to resign because of prostitution and "dirty tricks" scandals.

I'm not suggesting that Sarah Palin is a maniac like Eliot Spitzer. Ms. Palin seems to be a nice person and a capable governor, but we don't know whether her record can stand the test of time. Even the best chief executives usually suffer diminished popularity over the years due to economic downturns, errors in judgment, and various crises. Whether the vice presidential nominee of a major party is well-qualified shouldn't be left to chance.

The choice of Sarah Palin is a huge crap shoot that omits a crucial criterion for the selection of a running mate: whether that person is well- qualified, not only to be vice president, but to be president should the latter die or become incapacitated in office. In a perfect world, the criterion would be whether an individual is best qualified to be one life removed from the presidency, but political factors, such as demographics and the ability to deliver a particular state, always enter into the calculation.

The selection of a running mate was a more important decision for McCain than it was for Obama because of McCain's age and health. John McCain is 72 years old. He is partially disabled as a result of the torture he endured in Vietnam, and he has had bouts with skin cancer. His gait appeared slow and labored on-stage before and after his acceptance speech of September 4, 2008. There is a significantly greater chance that Sarah Palin would assume the presidency during a McCain Administration than that of Joe Biden becoming president in the middle of an Obama Administration.

Governor Palin's speech on September 3, 2008 received rave reviews from both liberal and conservative commentators. Catch phrases such as "a star is born" were bandied about on both the Fox News Channel and CNN. The RNC crowd loved her. Palin clearly helped McCain and exploded the "bimbo" image with which her detractors have been trying to paint her.

I'm uncomfortable judging someone on the basis of one speech. I don't know Sarah Palin and have never met her, but if she's anything similar to the person I saw on television on September 3, I 'd have to say that I liked her.

At her best, Palin exuded unvarnished warmth. I could see her hosting a pleasant July 4 barbecue. Governor Palin was particularly good at introducing her family and discussing energy policy. She was simultaneously tough and sweet. I was deeply moved when she paused to throw a kiss to a former POW who suffered at the "Hanoi Hilton" with John McCain. And she displayed considerable skill in peppering her remarks with humorous sarcasm when she ripped Obama.

That said, her execution was far from flawless. Palin had an annoying tendency to bite her lower lip, which reminded me of Bill Clinton during his Lewinsky days. Sometimes she sounded naturalistic; at other times, her voice was canned. There were several instances when she had a "deer-in-headlights" look. Governor Palin also repeatedly looked down at the podium to refer to her papers, something polished public speakers studiously avoid.

Judging her as a vice presidential candidate under extraordinary pressure, I'd give her an "A" for heart and a "B" for presentation. The only way I could get to the "A"-plus rating of the commentators would be to grade Palin as someone from a pin-dot town who was suddenly thrust upon a national stage. That would, of course, ignore the fact that she's been calling the shots from Juneau for about 20 months and negotiated a pipeline deal with multinational corporations.

In the long run, the speech will have limited impact. More important is whether Palin can perform well on the campaign trail and in her debate with Joe Biden-- and whether she can avoid further scandal. The fundamental fact that we don't know much about Palin remains unchanged.

In 1984 there was tremendous initial excitement when Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro of Queens became Walter Mondale's running mate. Ferraro spoke well at the Democratic Convention, but Mondale still lost to Reagan in a landslide.

McCain's choice is rooted in sex, youth, and ideology. That the Arizona senator felt it was necessary to pick Palin suggests that he does not have confidence in his ability to win on his own merit. McCain is betting that Palin can siphon enough female and young voters from Obama to produce a Republican victory in November. Conservatives and Evangelicals, who have problems with McCain's maverick tendencies, are, so far, delighted with the rightist Palin.

On her radio show on August 30, 2008, conservative commentator Monica Crowley repeatedly gushed about Ms. Palin's hunting and fishing. My God. Sarah Palin isn't running for Annie Oakley; she's bucking for an office that's a heartbeat away from the presidency. I'm glad that Governor Palin has a lovely family and is a "hockey mom," but that tells me nothing about her ability to handle the second most powerful office on Earth.

Another argument put forth by Ms. Crowley and other conservatives is that Governor Palin commands the Alaska National Guard. The suggestion behind that statement is that this credential better qualifies Palin to be an alternate commander in chief. But that executive function doesn't distinguish her from the forty-nine other governors who command National Guard units in their respective states.

According to a panel of historians interviewed by Politico.com, Sarah Palin will have the thinnest resume of any vice presidential nominee of a major political party in modern times. In the words of one panelist, Palin "makes Obama look like an elder statesman."

Barack Obama served eight years in the Illinois State Senate and has been a U.S. senator for four years. Illinois has about 20 times the population of Alaska. You cannot be intellectually honest and say that Obama's resume is dangerously thin--which it is--while maintaining that Palin is well-qualified to be vice president.

Ms. Palin has served less than two years as governor of a state with 640,000 souls living in an area over twice the size of Texas. Staten Island, New York City's smallest borough, has about three-quarters of the population of the entire state of Alaska. Prior to assuming her present position, Ms. Palin was mayor of a town about the size of World-War-II-era Stembert, a rural hamlet in eastern Belgium where my father was stationed shortly before the Battle of the Bulge.

Recommending Sarah Palin for the vice presidency is like asking the sheriff of Mayberry to be police commissioner of New York City. Andy Taylor is effective in his own environment; putting him in the big chair is too far and fast a leap.

McCain had plenty of Republican governors--and Republican women--with much more impressive credentials than those of Sarah Palin to choose among, including: Kay Bailey Hutchinson, U.S. senator from Texas since 1993 and fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate; Christine Todd Whitman, who was New Jersey's governor for seven years and head of the EPA for two-and-a-half; and Elizabeth Dole, North Carolina U.S. senator since 2002, transportation secretary under Ronald Reagan, labor secretary under George H.W. Bush, and former president of the American Red Cross. Of course, these distinguished women are not as young and exotic as Sarah Palin.

Palin is the ultimate Washington outsider, which dovetails perfectly with McCain's game plan. Alaska is contiguous with Russia. You can't get any farther away than that from DC and still be in the United States.

While a number of revered presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Harry S. Truman, had resumes that were deemed wanting when they ascended to the presidency or vice presidency, they all had qualifications vastly superior to those of Governor Palin.

Lincoln was a distinguished trial lawyer and practiced law for 20 years. He served four terms in the Illinois legislature and one term as a congressman. Running for a Senate seat in 1858, he was the standard-bearer for the newly minted Republican Party, engaging in a series of famous debates on slavery with Democrat Stephen Douglas.

JFK wrote an undergraduate thesis that became a bestselling book, While England Slept (1940). Another Kennedy work, Profiles In Courage (1956), won a Pulitzer Prize. During World War II, Kennedy was a P/T boat commander and wounded in action. He was a three-term congressman and a U.S. senator for eight years before being elected president in 1960.

Truman was a decorated field artillery officer in World War I. He was a county judge and a force in Missouri politics. Before becoming FDR's running mate in 1944, Truman had been a U.S. senator for eight years.

McCain's pick is as dangerous as it is historic. Governor Palin's recent statements suggest that she doesn't know much about Iraq. If Ms. Palin doesn't know much about Iraq, she probably doesn't know much about Russia and Iran. If a President McCain dies or becomes ill in office, how the hell is President Palin going to deal with Putin and Ahmadinejad?

Because she is not well known, it is impossible to determine whether Sarah Palin has been adequately vetted. We have already seen the effects of inadequate vetting upon a presidential candidate. That candidate's name is Barack Obama. Had the Wright-Ayers scandals broken before Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee.

Presumably, Team McCain has delved into Governor Palin's background and found no significant blemishes. But that doesn't eliminate the need for investigative reporting. Just ask George W. Bush. The Secret Service and the White House had supposedly vetted former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik before Bush nominated him for secretary of Homeland Security. A couple of days later, Kerik had to withdraw his name from consideration due to pending corruption charges.

On September 1, 2008, Governor Palin announced that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant and engaged to marry her boyfriend. According to The Washington Post, McCain had been aware of this situation for some time, and campaign representatives said that it did not disqualify Palin's candidacy. According to The Post, Governor Palin made the announcement in order to combat a vicious rumor circulated by far-left bloggers about Trig being an illegitimate child of Governor Palin's daughter.

This story should have been nobody's business but that of the families involved. Barack Obama agrees. Obama has declared Palin's family "off-limits," but that won't stop the ugly media feeding frenzy that has begun.

If Palin were a Democrat, her daughter's personal problem would be a non-factor. But Governor Palin is running as a social conservative, and many conservatives will be unhappy with this revelation. However, Ms. Palin will garner empathy from parents who have had similar experiences. How these two elements play out depends upon a host of imponderables.

McCain knows that this issue could be toxic to him. He wisely chose to permit Palin to release this information on Labor Day, and in the wake of Hurricane Gustav, in order to minimize its impact.

Palin's daughter is not the governor's only problem. Governor Palin is currently facing an ethics investigation in Alaska over the firing of a state trooper. According to Bill O'Reilly, Palin has retained a criminal defense attorney. If charges are brought against her--or some other hitherto unknown skeleton in her closet emerges--Palin will be forced to withdraw from the race; John McCain will look like a damned fool; and it will cost him the election.

McCain could also lose if enough independent voters decide that Palin is more come-on than inspiration. Sarah Palin might turn out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to this country, but she could also be a younger, sexier version of Harriet Miers.

A McCain defeat would be truly disastrous, not just for John McCain, but for all Americans. Despite his faults, McCain is far better prepared to be commander in chief than Barack Obama. McCain is a war hero who has served with distinction in the Senate for over 20 years. He doesn't have any radical associations; he is largely scandal-free; and he understands the nature of evil in the world. He would do a much better job of keeping America safe.

Unfortunately, McCain has sacrificed prudent judgment on the altar of political expediency. The choice of a presidential running mate is a serious matter; it should not be an excuse to emulate a riverboat gambler. McCain's audacious roll of the dice might turn out to be a stroke of genius, but it could just as easily put us all in greater danger.