While each of you are laughing yourselves sick or backslapping each other so hard as to knock each other's fillings out of your mouths, Slate magazine's female writers are quite impressed with McCain's choice. Perhaps they are seeing something each of you are missing? To wit:
It Had To Be You
Dahlia Lithwick
Absolutely agree that this was an inspired, brave and buzz-y choice for veep. Everything the Joe Biden pick was not. I think Team McCain has gamed this age we live in better than the Obama camp, for which they deserve serious credit. Now this is gonna be an election. And here I was getting ready to retire my girl-cleats for the rest of the fall. I couldn’t be more excited.
One quick thought on the “inexperience†charges against Sarah Palin. I have no problem at all with a candidate who is slightly less tested than some of the white male contenders she beat out. For one thing, I am not sure what "experience" even means when it comes to the vice presidency. For another, one of the single best decisions Ronald Reagan made was the nomination of an unknown and (relatively) inexperienced woman to the Supreme Court, just because she was a woman and it was high time. I can’t imagine what this country would look like for women today if he hadn’t.
Look what it did to this point. It stopped any water cooler talk of Obama's coronation cold this morning. McCain announced it early on Friday, at the end of the news cycle and on a long weekend so that that is what people interested in politics will discuss. And finally, it sets up the Republican convention with a sense of excitement and eagerness to find out more about this woman.
She's precisely what the McCain camp wanted-- the anti-Joe Biden pick, ie someone safe, boring, and predictably Establishment, and the very antithesis of the mantra "change." As Smash said, Plagerizin' Joe is the reason for Democrats to go fishing until February.
Her nomination is absolutely risky. But it is also absolutely an unbeliveable game changer in that it turns the Obama strategy on it's head by showing McCain is the candidate of change by understanding that playing not to lose is not anywhere near the same as playing to win.
I've already said nobody makes a decision who to vote for based on the Veep nominee, but in this case that conventional wisdom as close to being wrong as it possibly could be without knowing beforehand who is going to be President this fall. She cements the conservative base to McCain, she woos the Evangelical Right, and she takes a swing at the disaffected and disenfranchised Hillary supporter. Does she bring any over to McCain? Maybe, maybe not. But she gives them a viable alternative to the same old/same old in Joe Biden.
Quite frankly, I'm excited about this. I had hoped for Kay Bailey Hutchinson, but expected Romney. Instead we have a new player on the board, one who I hope can rise up to the challenge of national politics.
One thing is certain: This political season is genuinely worth watching now.
Totem
Edited, Aug 29th 2008 11:44pm by Totem