After months of speculation surrounding such names as Mitt Romney, Joe Lieberman, and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, McCain shocked most political pundits last week by selecting virtually unknown Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. To say that the selection of Palin was unconventional would be an understatement. But by the time that the Alaska Governor’s name had been leaked as McCain’s vice presidential choice, Obama’s grandiose acceptance speech before 80,000 supporters just hours earlier had been reduced to an afterthought in the national news cycle. Palin, while attractive and well-spoken, was certainly not the safe choice for McCain, and the pros and cons to her selection make it a risky move for the Arizona Senator.
The most obvious political advantage to choosing Sarah Palin is her potential appeal to female voters, especially those Hillary Clinton supporters discouraged by her loss in the Democratic primaries. Although Palin is only the second woman ever selected to a major party’s Presidential ticket, (Geraldine Ferraro was the first in 1984) it remains to be seen whether liberal, pro-choice women who supported Clinton earlier this year will cross party lines because of a conservative, pro-life vice presidential candidate who happens to be a female.
Another advantage to the selection of Palin is that she is viewed as a staunch conservative governor, one who will shore up the votes of many within the Republican party who were concerned that McCain was too much of a centrist. However, in choosing Palin, McCain also took his best argument against Barack Obama off the table. One of the main criticisms of Obama is his lack of experience, having only served three years in Congress; however, Palin has only served as the Governor of Alaska for two years. By selecting her as his running mate, McCain is essentially saying that he believes she is best qualified to be the President if he were unable to serve, a leap of faith which the Democrats will undoubtedly have a field day with, especially considering that inexperience has been one of the most consistent criticisms levied by the Republicans against Obama.
On the issue of Iraq, Palin does have credibility in the sense that her 19 year old son is going to be deployed to Iraq as an infantry solider later this year. On the other hand, however, she was quoted in an interview with Alaska Business Monthly shortly after becoming governor in 2007 as saying that she “[hadn’t] really focused much on the war in Iraq,” a quote which will most assuredly resurface in the two months leading up to Election Day. In a debate against Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, it will be interesting to see how Palin fares. Although she is not well known throughout the country, she is said to be a excellent debater, which was one of the reasons she rose so quickly to the top in Alaskan politics.
While the debate over the war in Iraq dominated the 2004 election and is still at the forefront of this year’s race, the issue of the economy may determine the winner of this year’s election. Fortunately for McCain, the economy may be Palin’s strongest point. Having lived in Alaska and served as its governor, Palin has a unique perspective on the nation’s energy crisis. The citizens of Alaska pay more for gasoline than anywhere else in America, so Palin proposed giving each citizen of Alaska who drives an automobile a one-time, $1,200 check to compensate for the rise in gas prices. She has also supported drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, a hotly contested issue which the majority of Americans support. While it is easy for the Democrats to call the Republicans in Congress short-sighted and environmentally unfriendly for advocating oil exploration in ANWR, it is much more difficult to make that same argument against the sitting Governor of Alaska.
The safe choice for McCain would have been a well known politician such as Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty; however, the safe choice in this case may not have been the most politically savvy one. After Obama wrapped up a successful Democratic convention with an extravagant acceptance speech and conventional wisdom pointing towards a Democratic victory in November, McCain may have been wise to rock the boat with an out-of-the-box vice presidential choice. Considering that Obama was leading in virtually every electoral vote projection leading up to the conventions, it wasn’t as if McCain had much to lose.
