The Palin Pick: My Take

You have brought up most of the reasons I too like this choice. Palin also wants to drill in Alaska (will McCain be swayed?) and I agree that extra taxes on oil companies will only raise prices (contrary to Dem rhetoric).

The dems I heard comment today seemed to take Palin as a joke. Their sarcasm was rampant as they asked, "and you say Obama has no experience?" CNN had the most straw grasping response when they opined that if Palin were to become Vice she might "neglect her baby". Don't you love it? The party who wants every woman to work and leave her child in the care of state run daycare is worried about neglect? I don't see them worrying about movie stars having children out of wedlock or even within marriages and still having careers. While all those single women work who is keeping their children from neglect? Wait, could the operative word here be Downs? Since so many would terminate the pregnancy of a Downs baby maybe THAT is the real problem here.

I heard several state that it isn't important because a VP doesn't do anything anyway. Wait a minute!!!!! Isn't Dick Cheney evil incarnate and the originator of every single thought and action Bush came up with? Not to mention Algore who wielded unlimited power to set up environmental agencies and funding that are still place today and only growing in power. You can't have it both ways - either Biden and Palin are both dupes or they will make a difference to the voter and to the presidency.

There are TH posters who will not vote for McCain, and who want to see the GOP dissolve and make room for a new "conservative" party. They dismiss the Palin pick, citing the irrelevancy of the Vice President and point to McCain as a danger to our country as much as Obama.

I have serious reservations about McCain myself. But I think the entrenched have missed the significance of Palin. IMO this is the rise of conservatism, not some jaded ploy. McCain is rising in the polls because he's exuding conservatism now, and shied from Lieberman and Ridge to choose the most conservative of all those considered. This is hopeful news, and Sarah Palin may mean more to us than just a good half of the ticket.

good post Wil.

Bear in mind, she's been Governor of a state with a smaller population than Los Angeles.

About the same experience equivalent of a City Councilman here.

But she has after all been an executive....of a small state (population wise) that had an entrenched cronyism system that she had to break through for election. A state that has little tolerance for BS and little patience for fakes.....I have just been there once, for a week in Fairbanks, but I had a college roommate from Alaska and several college friends from there...people I have known from Alaska have very little BS tolerance, meaning she must be genuine to hold an 80+ percent approval rating.

Also Alaska has distinct problems and issues that bely its small population. There is a lot of state support to Native Alaskans and a lot of bitterness among the non native Alaskans about reverse discrimination. It is a place where, like Oregon where I grew up, you have an odd mix of hippie environmentalists, rugged sometimes anti establishment individualists, and those who rely on fishing, oil, timber, mining, and other natural resource jobs who are at times at odds with each other as well as the environmentalists. She has only been governor for two years, but has negotiates these tricky waters well.

Also, on the other post, when I look at the two men I consider the best presidents since 1945, Truman and Reagan, I see one man who never finished college and was chosen to be a judge because of his genuineness and honesty, and on a six year stint as a local judge won a seat to the Senate, and 10 years later was chosen VP by FDR. Though FDR rarely talked to him, when his number came up, he rose to the occasion, dealing very well with the complex post war world. I see the other man who learned to be an administrator as the President of the Screen Actors Guild, who as Governor of California had a very "moderate" record, despite his affection for Barry Goldwater and his conservative revolution, who while President did in fact compromise a lot (On O Conner, on spending, on Beirut), but stood up when it mattered. I think experience can be overrated, and it matters more how you make decisions and where your loyalties lie. I have far less reservation about Palin than I do about McCain himself.

You do realize Truman was a VP first who took over after FDR died only 3 mos into his presidency? I'm sure you know this, but it bears mentioning to those who don't. This just proves how important the VP can be. If something happens to the President, we need a good conservative VP to step in and we certainly don't want Pelosi running our country!!