Sometimes the “Gods” do small favors. Senator Barack Obama got one on Friday. Over the past month, John McCain was able to pull virtually even with Barack Obama in the polls. Obama has been suffering the defection of working class White males, and he re-angered the most ardent of Hillary Clinton’s female voters by putting Senator Joe Biden on the ticket as Vice President. In pre-Democratic Convention polling, a sizeable percentage of Clinton primary voters, at least a third, indicated that they would either stay home or support Senator John McCain.
Coming into the Democratic National Convention, the contest was virtually a dead heat. While the brilliantly executed Democratic Convention would certainly result in a major bump in popularity for Obama, this campaign would likely have pulled very close again after the Republican Convention. To do that, however, McCain would have had to nominate a strong Vice Presidential candidate; someone who was clearly competent to step immediately and safely into his shoes should anything happen to him. He is, after all, 72 years old and not in the best of health and the selection of a competent Vice President could not have been more critical to his possible success.
Instead, I believe that McCain made a colossal political and electoral blunder that virtually seals his fate in the contest against Barack Obama. He named the female Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, a virtual unknown with little national and international experience, to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
In my opinion, he has all but assured that Obama will be elected the next President of the United States. Why do I believe this? I have been traveling over the past week or so, and that has given me the opportunity to talk with many Republicans and Independents to gain their reactions. The reaction was nearly uniform – amazement, disbelief, and even horror at the consideration of Governor Sarah Palin as the person who might have her finger on the nuclear trigger. Americans like soccer Moms, but they do not give them access to nuclear weapons – not even voting soccer Moms.
- Governor Palin, no matter what her partisan advocates will lamely contend, is simply not equipped by education or experience to serve either as Vice President or President, and McCain does not have sufficient time in two months either to educate her to her responsibilities or to persuade the electorate otherwise.
- Most Americans have a strong sense of responsibility about the importance and gravity of the choice of President; and the selection of Gov. Palin violates that sense of responsibility which will affect nearly everyone to some extent other than the most ardent Evangelicals.
- Most people (in the media and the electorate) will assume that she is on the ticket only in a cynical attempt to appeal to the dissatisfied, female Clinton supporters. However, her political views could not be further from those of Hillary Clinton voters: pro-life where they are pro-choice, ardent gun supporter where they are more moderate, religiously right wing where they religiously moderate, etc. I believe that she will instead repel many of these voters right back to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Mitt Romney, who is clearly competent (no matter what you think of his politics), might have made it possible for a portion of these voters to cross over and support the Republican ticket, and Palin will have the opposite effect.
- Her presence on the ticket reduces McCain’s ability to argue that Obama is not sufficiently experienced to serve as President. Obama has had 18 months to convince the electorate that he is a remarkably able and talented man, regardless of his resume, and his speech accepting the nomination was one of the best ever, convincing even many of the doubters that he is tough enough to fill that office. Now, McCain – at 72 and not in perfect health – has placed a clearly inexperienced, right wing amateur one step away from running America’s American military and nuclear policies. Yes, it is frightening and an almost inconceivable lapse of judgment!
- The nomination of Sarah Palin undercuts McCain’s argument in several ways: the argument that he is prudent and reasonable, the argument that he is a centrist Republican, and the argument that he has good judgment.
McCain violated the first responsibility of a Presidential nominee, which is to nominate a Vice Presidential candidate who can serve as President in the event that the President dies or is disabled in office. Obama, by direct contrast, nominated an individual, Senator Joe Biden, who is widely recognized as someone who could serve to lead America should something happen to Obama. This is not trivial. After all, the Vice Presidents of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Nixon all were called to serve, and attempts were made on the lives of Ford and Reagan. Thus, I believe that John McCain has committed a major blunder that will make his election a virtual impossibility.
What does this say about Senator John McCain? As a moderate, but responsible person, I no longer think that John McCain has either the intelligence nor the temperament to serve as the Commander-in-Chief, and I am equally certain that she does not have the requirements to serve in that role. The decision was stupid and ill-considered, made almost entirely by himself, and If you wish to embolden our adversaries, and we have many, think about the consequences if she is the one making the life and death decisions for all of us. If you wish to horrify our allies, just let McCain get ill and wonder what fear that possibility will produce among them.
While she clearly makes the radical and Evangelical right very happy, McCain has now upped the stakes for all of the rest of us in this election, insuring that Democrats and responsible Independents and Republicans will be galvanized into action to contribute to Obama’s campaign and turn out to reject this extraordinary foolishness. Why? Because there are tens of millions of American who dearly love their Country, even if they have disagreements with the Democrats and Barack Obama, and they are not going to turn our Country over to an old and ill man, whatever his heroism, and a woman that would be an embarrassment to all of us.
The Hillary Clinton women voters, who supported her with their hearts and enthusiasms, did so because Clinton was clearly a person competent enough to serve as President. Sarah Palin’s nomination is a direct insult to their intelligence and values. Does John McCain really hold those women in such low esteem that he would dream that they will be satisfied with a right wing woman, with no claim to expertise in international or military affairs? Quite the contrary, McCain has made it virtually impossible for the Clinton voters not to support Barack Obama – more than any speech by Hillary or Bill Clinton could ever produce.
The Response of Barack Obama and Joe Biden
Obama and Biden need do very little to make these points to the American people. The national media will make their case for them, although an ad about Sarah Palin and nuclear weapons is probably irresistible. The debates will make their points for them. They are already getting a major “bump” in the polls, but that bump will expand as the reality of McCain’s blunder sinks home on the voters.
The people I spoke with over my travels could not understand how he could make such a remarkable and short sighed decision. I did not have an answer. I was as amazed as they were. However, we all have watched people in power do terribly foolish things at times, perhaps because they lose sight of the underlying character and intelligence of the American electorate. George Bush did just that when he attacked Iraq even without any compelling evidence to support his position. When people in power listen only to the voices that support them, it is easy to lose touch with the rest of us —and reality.
I have argued repeatedly that this election would continue to be close, all the way to the final week. I have thought that Obama would win in a close election, where he would make up with the young and minorities the losses he would sustain among White working class men and some Clinton supporters. Today, I no longer think this at all. I am willing to predict that Obama will win by as much as ten points in the end, and that the election will not seem close at all after all the votes are counted. The American people are simply not as stupid, or prejudiced, or conservative as those in the Republican establishment assume.
The Impact of the Democratic Convention
The Thursday evening of the Democratic Convention was one of the best nights of political theater I have ever watched. Biden’s selection as Vice President now appears a work of genius. The speech by Al Gore might be the best I have ever seen him make. But the final speech by Barack Obama was a masterpiece of rhetoric and delivery – as good as it gets in American politics and in a class almost by itself since the days of Ronald Reagan. Moreover, the Democratic Party as a Party looked like a political party that was ready to “govern” the United States, with cohesion of message and unity that masked many of the divisions that have emerged in the past in the Party. They made John McCain seem old and befuddled; and they could not be a starker contrast to a Republican Party which would nominate Sarah Palin to be Vice President.
The only chance McCain ever had was to hug the Center, promote the view that he is a not George Bush the second, and nominate a Vice President that would reassure wavering voters that the Country would be in good hands if anything happened to him. Instead, he nominated a Vice Presidential candidate who can provide no such reassurance, and whose values and commitments pull McCain further toward the Evangelical and right wing of American politics.
A New Political Era is Nearly Upon Us
Ronald Reagan, beginning in 1980 and culminating in the landslide of 1984, ushered in the last “sea change” in the landscape of American politics. Barack Obama is going to usher in the next “sea change” in our politics – a change which is a direct contrast to the policies and the failures of the Administration of George Bush and his fellow Republicans. Obama is in the process of mobilizing a new electoral majority in American politics and McCain and Bush are presiding over the decline of the Republican Party to the status of a minority party for years to come. George Bush is the Herbert Hoover of this generation, although Hoover was brighter and more talented. The fact that McCain, Bush and Cheney have all contributed mightily to this debacle will remain lost on them to the very end. They lack the perspective that would allow them to understand what they have accomplished.
The Last Gasp of the Republicans in 2008
There are plenty of hard headed realists among the right wing in American politics, and they can read the tea leaves as well as I can. They know what is at stake – the end of Evangelical influence in the policies of the Federal Government, the loss of all of the well placed friends that the lobbyists have put in office to control and direct spending, the huge subsidies to those who have supported the party, the loss of their ability to reshape the Supreme Court, the loss of Republican incumbents at every level of government, and more.
There is really only one shot left for them, and that is to use as much money and advertising as they can to throw every kind of slim at Obama and Biden, in the hope that enough will stick to overcome Obama’s advantages. With Sarah Palin as the Vice President, however, they cannot prevail. The responsible Center of the American electorate will not accept the idea that Palin should control our military and nuclear policies, and with good and self-evident reason, and certainly not in war time.
Just my opinion,
Gordon Black
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