Kathleen Parker: McCain Chose Palin For Her Looks

Conservative Kathleen Parker's column tearing apart Sarah Palin's qualifications netted her thousands of hate letters. But that hasn't stopped her from following up with another salvo on the Republican vice presidential nominee. This time, she posits that Palin's appearance has something to do with the hasty way she was picked.

My husband called it first. Then, a brilliant 75-year-old scholar and raconteur confessed to me over wine: "I'm sexually attracted to her. I don't care that she knows nothing."

Finally, writer Robert Draper closed the file on the Sarah Palin mystery with a devastating article in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain."

McCain didn't know her. He didn't vet her. His campaign team had barely an impression. In a bar one night, Draper asked one of McCain's senior advisers: "Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?"

The adviser thought a moment and replied: "No, I don't know."

...

One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten. By no means am I suggesting anything untoward between McCain and his running mate. Palin is a governor, after all. She does have an executive résumé, if a thin one. And she's a natural politician who connects with people.

But there can be no denying that McCain's selection of her over others far more qualified -- and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter -- suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by . . . what?

Read the whole thing.

Rachel Weiner is an Associate Politics Editor at the Huffington Post. She can be reached here.

Comments

[robotfog]

Maybe the attraction isn't sexual, but it's an attraction for the entire 'package' - A comely governor who is physical in that she hunts and fishes and all that stuff.

[Okieborn]

I must be missing something, I guess I see to many rattle snakes when I view Ms. Palin !!!!

[LindyLee]

I have to laugh at the throwback of the Democrat party with all the sexist comments that have been made on these bulletin boards. There is so very little respect for women, especially intelligent women and it is clear the male Dems on these boards are quite influenced by certain parts of their party which are quite a distance from the brain.

God help America where Dems focus on the mundane and ignore the issues until they turn into crises.

[gaja]

Do you know what real sexism is? Thinking that $150,000 worth of clothes and makeup will somehow make people forget that Palin has NO QUALIFICATIONS, NO ETHICS, and NO IDEA what the Vice President's job is.

God help the truly LOST Republicans who think that somehow building a campaign based on lies, bigotry, and slander will work after 8 years of the most offensive REPUBLICAN presidency this country has seen in decades. As a Christian, and someone who believes in Obama with all of my heart, I'm truly offended that a few extreme right wingers have used religion and RACISM to further divide and deceive people. It isn't the Democrats that are inciting violence - that would be McCain and Palin!! So get your facts straight.

[LindyLee]

I believe he must have been terribly overwhelmed to meet a woman who is beautiful, gutsy, says it as it is, very intelligent, an expert in energy and with exec experience­.......and who had more experience than Barack Obama, the top of the other ticket did.

Yeah, there are a lot of people who are jealous of her...many wishing they could be her or have her attributes, but Sarah Palin is the well rounded woman, with a great humor, a terrific mom and a governor with an 80% approval rate.

And the guyz know that she can kick their azzes without them even knowing it.....the­y are scared to death of her because she is going to make a difference in Washington.

[devinsbuddy]

Are you frickin' serious? Or just delusional? All she has shiown me is that she can BS with the best of them. Gut a moose, much the same as she would the Constitution. Be a GMILF.

[hexham]

..very intelligent? okay, you're certifiable if you believe that. I have a bridge I'd like to sell ya! Yup.

[rain39]

At dinner last night, I was sitting with a bunch of Repug men. After Sarah Palin's name was mentioned, to a man, they said lustily, she's hot!! These guys all had major jobs with an international retailer so actually could use their brains and believe she could take over the presidency because she's hot. Talking about thinking with your peckers!!

My spouse (a moderate republican who is a man without a country voting for Obama) doesn't think she can talk her way out of a paper bag but of course agrees she is hot because actually, I guess, she is. No qualification for high office though, guys.

[littledogs1]

I am constantly amazed that the party that is supposed to rep family values rarely does. I say that because as a mother I teach my children to be kind, to accept people as they are, to be tollerant. I teach them to be giving, to care about other people and the enviroment. To me those are family values, John Mccain and Sarah Palin and their campain, the republican party starting with that nasy speech she gave at the convention and all the other nasty hate filled speeches given during the convention, the attack adds do not represent family values, her knocked up little girl, her lies about trooper gate, her lies about the bridge, her lies about the pipe line, her back stabbing political ways, mccains complete lack of honor, they are all sick, and I hope the Amercican people reject them once and for all. The republican party once stood for something, now it is represented by people like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, Yuck.

[LindyLee]

Nasty, nasty, nasty. B y the way you write and what you say, I seriously doubt you teach your children good family values, not with attacking someone else's children, accusing people of lying and calling people names.....­.....you don't live in a glass house do you?

[genea]

She told it the way it is! Where have you been?

[anti-ignorance]

LindyLee. Let's hear you defend any of it. The truth is littledogs1 is right. Check the facts and come back to us. Are you denying that her daughter is an unwed teenage (soon-to-be) mother? Are you denying that Sarah Palin lied in Troopergate? Are you denying that Sarah Palin took the money for the Bridge after she said "no thanks"? Are you denying that her
self-aggrandizing RNC speech lacked value and was filled with hateful words meant to terrorize the nation?

[izAriver]

Her looks deteriorate with every passing moment.

[LAThinker]

Call it a Barbie effect

http://www.ucubd.com/Index.aspx?id=776&cid=3163

[LindyLee]

How very sexist! and how very Dem.

[DangitRuss]

This is on the same level of water being wet and the sun being hot...

[dearlizzie]

Katherine is clearly deeply stung and hurt by the response she's gotten from the right . Now it appears as if she might be getting catty as a reaction.

Tempting as it is to view McCain as being as mindless as Ms. Parker suggests, doesn't it seem more likely that he was forced into this pick by the evangelical right whose leadership threatened to revolt and take their "base" home with them if he didn't choose her?

I don't doubt Ms. Palin's looks (tatooed lipliner, bad 80's updon'ts, dim eyes and augmented upper torso notwithstanding) was the perfect sugar to make the medicine go down, but even I don't think the desperately ambitious John McCain is so stupid as to have thought solely with his lower torso.

[LindyLee]

Dear Lizzie, I have to agree with you. Katherine happens to be one of our most sour, disgruntled women, who feels threatened by the vibrance and excitement Palin is bringing to the ticket.

Poor Katherine.­..she needs to grow up, start writing responsible and do what she does best...bec­ause this IS a pretty ugly side of her.

[genea]

Yes he does - Look at his history

[Jules1]

I agree she was pretty, but that has gone away, once you see the ugliness inside it starts showing on the outside and you stop and take another look and see under all that makeup, it's not pretty.

[LindyLee]

Not sexist, this one is catty. Someone needs to grow up.

[Bitsko]

Ms. Parker's opinion flies in the face of stories that have come out recently, for instance in the New Yorker a week or two ago, that Palin had become a favorite of the ne-cons like Kristol by the spring.

[1differentdrummer]

Hmmmmm. Maybe she reminds him of someone, suppose?

[gintheb]

Old man thought he was gonna "tap that a**".

[LindyLee]

Sexist and perverted and so very Democrat.

[genea]

again you are confused

[jyoungsa]

Oh honey, you need to go to bed. Just pretend your sweetie Sarah is there with you. Bye now.

[Raleigh Dave]

I am convinced the RNC had more to do with picking Palin than McSame did, he was leaning towards Lieberman. Now that he is stuck with that Frosty The Snowbabe, he has no choice but to look like he is glad she is on the ticket.

McSame looked like he needed Geritol during the Brian Williams interview, smirking, wincing, no eye contact, etc, yet Palin just keeps smiling and speak oh so folksy.

[dearlizzie]

When the campaign aides memoirs come out next year, we're surely hear that the evangelical base that has always distrusted McCain had Palin picked out far in advance and sandbagged him.

[LindyLee]

"frosty the snowbabe" Yep, you win the price for being a sexist Dem, as well!

[HST]

Why didn't anyone else think of that? Kathleen Parker is a genius (or not!).

[dearlizzie]

I've been hearing it for a while now (5-6 weeks) and obviously so has Katherine. I think Raleigh_Dave's got it right.