The Palin Pick -- The Devolution of McCain

In one of our many conversations as we crisscrossed the country during his campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, John McCain said to me, "I've always tried to act on what I thought was the best for the country. And that has guided me.... The only thing I can do is assure people that I would act on principle."

I traveled with McCain for weeks that political season, stayed in Arkansas with him, Cindy, and their children, and - for a Vanity Fair cover profile -- filled dozens of notebooks and tapes with observations from and about a potentially heroic politician who seems far removed from the man running for president today.

Three weeks after the 2008 Republican convention, on the cusp (maybe) of the first presidential debate, it is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act.

"I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," he has said throughout this campaign. Yet, in choosing Palin, he has demonstrated -- whatever his words -- it may be permissible to imperil the country, conceivably even to "lose" it, in order to win the presidency. That would seem the deeper meaning of his choice of Palin.

Indeed, no presidential nominee of either party in the last century has seemed so willing to endanger the country's security as McCain in his reckless choice of a running mate. He is 72 years old; has had four melanomas, a particularly voracious form of cancer; refuses to release his complete medical records. Three of our last eleven presidents (and nine of all 43) have come to office unexpectedly in mid-term from the vice presidency: Truman, who within days of FDR's death was confronted with the decision of whether to drop the atom bomb on Japan; Lyndon Johnson, who took the oath in Dallas after JFK's assassination; Gerald Ford, sworn in following the resignation of Richard Nixon. A fourth vice president, George H.W. Bush, briefly exercised the powers of the presidency after the near-assassination of Ronald Reagan.

Given that history, what does John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin -- the cavalier, last-minute process of her selection and careless vetting; and her over-briefed, fact-lite performance since -- reveal about this military man who has attested to us for years that he is guided by his personal code of honor? "Two things I will never do," McCain told me, "are [to] lie to the American people, or put my electoral interests before the national interest" -- an obvious precursor of "I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war."

McCain, I wrote for Vanity Fair, "often speaks of the duty to follow his conscience in politics, rather than polls or party discipline. This, he says, comes from having escaped death and becoming 'more aware of the transience of everything we do.'"

"I've always had a pretty good idea about how to define something as to whether it's right or wrong," he told me. "I don't mean that I'm better or worse than anybody else. I just mean that when I see an issue and think about it and talk to people, I do generally have the ability to know what's the right course of action, even if it may not be what the majority wants. So I have a certain amount of confidence that I don't have to have a majority opinion on my side."

It does not take a near-death experience to know that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be commander in chief, or that -- in choosing her -- McCain has ignored his own oft-avowed code of conduct. "McCain made the most important command decision of his life when he chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee," noted David Ignatius in the Washington Post. "....No promotion board in history would have made such a decision."

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Above all, the John McCain I covered in 1999-2000 was -- he said -- convinced that two factors were undermining the interests of the United States: its cultural wars, causing political gridlock in Washington and civic discontent across the land; and the unbending agenda of the right-wing of the Republican party that, in his view, had been captured by the Christian conservative movement and bore disproportionate responsibility for the poisonous state of American politics. Exhibit One: the scorched-earth campaign that George W. Bush was then waging against McCain's insurgent run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Yet, McCain, is, in fact, running the kind of campaign against Barack Obama that George Bush ran against him in 2000, which he regarded rightly as dishonest, dishonorable and diversionary in terms of the truth about him and about the nation's problems.

The conservative commentator George Will has been especially incisive of late about the "dismaying," "un-presidential temperament" of McCain and the sleazy tenor of his campaign. Karl Rove (!) has responded to the incessant lying of McCain's ads (one claims falsely that Obama has promoted "comprehensive" sex education for five-year-olds -- he had, in fact, endorsed legislation to insure that kindergartners were warned about sexual predators), by saying, yes, the McCain camp's mendacity has "gone one step too far."

Meanwhile, McCain's frequent invocations of the need for bi-partisan statesmanship are interspersed with the angry themes of cultural warfare and of the Republican convention orchestrated by his handlers, the most dominant of them practitioners from the campaigns of George W. Bush: attacks on "tax-and-spend Democrats," on the dependable liberal bogeyman, on "the angry Left," on Constitution-rewriting federal judges (including, incongruously, three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold McCain's singular legislative achievement: the campaign-finance act he authored with Democrat Russ Feingold).

"If hypocrisy were gold, the Capitol would be Fort Knox," McCain once famously said. "Some of those guys," he said, referring to his fellow senators, "have they even had lives? What have they done?" He added, "Aw, jeez, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets me into trouble." Indeed.

McCain's first choices to be his running mate were former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Senator Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-Independent from Connecticut, and former vice presidential nominee of his former party. Neither passed the ideological litmus test of the Republican-Right -- "The Base" -- because each holds pro-choice views. Certainly both are qualified to step into the presidency in terms of national security credentials -- regardless of whether one agrees with their particular politics -- in the event of the death of the president. McCain's "Hail Mary" pick -- Palin -- was hastily decided on the next-to-last day of the Democratic convention, by which time it was evident that Obama's convention was winning over independent voters; all that remained was the final night and the opportunity for Obama to deliver a speech that would further work to his advantage, and debilitate the McCain campaign. Only by exciting "The Base" could McCain remain competitive and win, it was calculated.

The distance from McCain's ads and assertions about his presidential opponent and Democrats generally, and his decision to run a "persona-based" campaign, as opposed to being specific on the issues, is of a piece with his choice of Palin to be his running mate. As another conservative commentator sometimes critical of McCain -- Peggy Noonan -- has noted, the "narrative" of a life [McCain's, Palin's], takes over from existential political fact in the type of campaign run by McCain and his handlers. We have heard an awful lot in the past few weeks, especially from Sarah Palin, about John McCain "The Maverick," just as we did in the convention narrative. But what McCain has actually been doing in this campaign, rather than actually being The Maverick, is conveying the appearance of iconoclasm, and playing to the crowd. (Hence, perhaps, "suspending" his campaign -- and trying to postpone the first presidential debate while his poll numbers are sinking -- to deal with the financial crisis?) At this point, the maverick claim seems no more genuine than Sarah Palin's charade foreign-policy tour of Manhattan with no witnesses -- reporters -- permitted to observe the proceedings.

The issue of Palin's relative ignorance about international affairs and the larger world beyond America's shores (compared to previous vice presidential nominees), her attendant arrogance in seeming to revel in it, and McCain's decision to subject the country to it in choosing a possible president -- is the biggest question in this election, or perhaps ought to be. It goes to the core of who the John McCain of this campaign is.

Another conservative commentator, David Brooks, wrote last week: "Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."

The more we learn, the more we realize the vetting process was -- given the rush of the circumstances -- hopelessly inadequate: McCain didn't know many aspects of Palin's record or her reputation (none of which is to say she wouldn't be a congenial fit as, say, Secretary of Interior in a McCain administration). McCain's first choices for a running mate -- Ridge and Lieberman -- were light years ahead of Palin in the vice presidential-qualification department. But they didn't meet the ideological test, exactly the ideological litmus test that McCain has attacked his whole political career and told us he would never succumb to.

John McCain is a serious man, as anyone who has spent time with him knows. But he has not run the kind of serious campaign he once promised.

Not for the first time, as many of his fellow Republicans (as opposed to friendly reporters and sympathetic Democrats) had long maintained, McCain's more reckless inclinations and lesser impulses prevailed. A great political movement that would transcend rabid partisanship and hard ideology does not seem in the cards.

And if he wins the election, Sarah Palin -- who in her first post-convention discussion of foreign policy indicated a willingness to go to war with Russia over Georgia -- stands a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Ultimately it is the choice of Palin, made in the moment when action speaks loudest, that may undermine a quarter-century of assertions by John McCain about the preeminence of duty, honor and country in his political schema.

Comments

[AWCG]

If it weren't so sad it would be great entertainment to watch the McCain everyone used to respect become totally erratic and rudderless. And this from a Navy hero who should know the value of a rudder. Maybe that was one of those classes he skipped at the Naval Academy. And I have no sympathy for Palin in her stumbling, frankly terrifying, attempts to answer very simple questions. Just as McCain recklessly picked her to pander to the base, the base he has always disliked and who has always disliked him, she recklessly agreed to do it. She has such a small worldview-not a criticism, just a fact- that she either didn't realize she is out of her league or is simply arrogant enough to think it doesn't matter. She has no apparent capacity for understanding the complexity and diversity of our country, let alone the world. This has got to be the most stunt-driven campaign I have ever witnessed. The presidency should not be won through a game of craps. This comes from a fiscal conservative/social moderate-m­iddle-aged female- who was a Republican until this summer. That party and their candidate have lost their way and lost my respect. I was open to the idea, but I don't want McCain anywhere near the White House. I have never been more disappointed in a public official in my life, especially one that I used to believe had integrity and courage.

[arthur2008]

This is the only possible conclusion: John McCain has put his country--make that OUR country--in jeopardy with his cynical and self-serving selection of a running mate.

While Sarah Palin may well prove to be merely a short-running joke on late night television, Sen. McCain is a figure of historic significance, whether or not he becomes president.

It is puzzling and disturbing that he would squander a 50-year legacy of government service through his transparently unpatriotic choice. And, in the final analysis, it is more than that.

It is inexcusable.

[JNagarya]

McSame is a "figure of historic significance" only to McSame and dupes for self-aggrandizement dishonestly presented as being "experience," "herosim," "maverickism," and other such irrelevances.

Can you say "Keating Five"?

[Boadicea]

Where was Palin last night after the debate? We got a good look at the kind of judgment Obama exercised in choosing Biden - he is very obviously a highly qualified candidate.

The fact that McCain keeps his VP candidate hidden from public is a clear statement about his own poor judgment.

[davkaman]

Indeed it does. Given the Cheney legacy of secrecy, this is stunning. If you are running for vice-president, you should make yourself available to the electorate. The reluctance and secrecy speak volumes.
I am still amazed at the fact that Brooks asserts of Palin that "if you want to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman' and Bernstein, citing that, lets it go without comment. Destroy corruption? Like appointing your high school buddy to run the state Division of Agriculture on the force of her experience as a realtor--and, oh yes, liking cows as a kid? From what we know of the Palins, they have surrounded themselves with cronies and gone on political vendettas against people for whom they have personal grudges. The NY Times covered this last Sunday extensively.
Some destroyer of corruption.

[SailFree]

I enjoy Joe Biden. He is a funny, funny man!

[jackiecee]

The question was-where was Sarah last night? The comedy show is coming soon

[jackiecee]

She was in Pennsylvania at an Irish Pub Bar and was booed away by protestors and hecklers according to a TV station in town

[INTUITE]

There is no question as to why he chose Palin. But now, at least for the time being, he has to live with the hand he has dealt himself (see Rumsfeld on this comment). It shows a complete lack of sound judgement (I will not say it is his age). Dumping her, which he most probably will have to do,will destroy any chance he had, keeping her (see the VP debate) will only be worse. The poor man has himself in a hole which he keeps digging deeper.

[HipHopYouKNOW]

He does (not) have my sympathy..­.he is too volatile, too rash to be president. I will say that it's his age-he is trying to overcompensate for it.

[DeejTu]

There is a quote that applies to the current situation in the country and the world. It was made, as far as I can determine, by Mark Twain.

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on.....or by imbeciles who really mean it."

Seems to make the point rather simply....­..........­..........­.........

[Scarmouche]

You're all missing the point. Even if Sarah Palin becomes president, she will be a convenient puppet for the wingnut Right to continue their dismanteling of this country. That's why the crazies on the Right aren't concerned if Sarah becomes president. Look at how they handled W. They let him have his way. Bluster and blather but in the end Cheney and that whole crowd ran this country in the ditch while enriching themselves. Sarah they can control. They couldn't control Ridge or Lieberman.

[HipHopYouKNOW]

Yes, that's the whole reason why we cannot have yet another Repug in the WH. She would be little more than Oval Office Coffee Girl, and when she did do something on her own, it would probably be something disastrous to women. Do all you can to get out the vote for Obama-this one's serious!

[mmerose]

I would quibble that Ridge and Lieberman are already puppets of the neocon/big oil machine, what they lack is the charismatic appeal to the crackpot culture-war right. Other than that you're on target. Isn't it tragic, that a substantial component of our citizenry literally doesn't care about total ruin of this country if they just get some lip service against abortion?

[CaldwellYoung]

Yes, I agree. So do other people in my household. It's amazingly clever. Get her elected VP, McCain takes a chicken bone, and the right wing ideologues who ran GWBush slip in behind Sara Palin and run her like a puppet on a stage.

[TrueCynic]

If anything proves to me that McCain has neither the judgment, nor the temperament, to be president, it is his "process" in selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. It completely contradicts his assertions that he is a maverick, and that he has the country's interests ahead of his own political interests.

[Rumba]

McC in lurching to his decision on Palin, made a pathetic choice for his running mate. I agree with Bernstein, a misguided attempt to boost his faltering campaign to get himself elected... the h ell with the country.

[Shake-A-Spear]

McCain seems to believe in his immortality -- that if he is elected Palin will never be more than Vice President come hell or high water -- or death itself. "So don't you worry," he tells us." I needed her to help me win, but once I do, you'll have me as Pres'dnt for at least 4 years, maybe 8. And forget ''til death do us part.'"

[spartanmom]

HuffPost's Pick

Is John McCain a complete sell out or is it possible that he is trying to lose the election?

It is almost a Hollywood scenario but give me a second:

Principled politician running for president somehow blinks and when he opens his eyes he finds that he has been totally co-opted by the very forces he used to fight. The only hope for the country he loves is to choose a poison pill running mate that can charm the base while alienating the thinking public. Then he continues to make choices that subtly undermine his own campaign because he knows he has to keep his evil handlers from gaining control.

I would almost rather believe that than the self-interested sell-out described here

[Freesia2]

What a nicer person you are spartanmom. I wish that his motivations were that high minded.

But I think it more likely that he's a 72 year old man who has one last shot at the brass ring and he doesn't care who he has to hug or what he has to swallow if it will just give him the prize he wants. The sad thing? Even if he gets the White House, it won't be "John McCain" moving in to it. In effect, John McCain will never get to win after all, even if he wins.

[spartanmom]

Freesia2, I might be nicer but it seems you are smarter.

From a letter in today's NYT:

In Mr. McCain’s 2002 autobiography, “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote candidly about his run for the presidency in 2000:

“I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to become president. ... In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/lweb28brooks.html?ref=opinion

[Rumba]

I think you give too much credit to McCain having such subtlety in his thought process. His main characteristic is rash decisions when faced with adversity.

[ZeusBoots]

I would like to believe in Santa Claus, but you know how that story ends.
It is an interesting proposition though. Perhaps if he did not graduate 5th from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, or if he had the smarts to read his own safety manuals for his fighter planes, then I might consider your idea. The problem is that you are assuming he is intelligent enough to concoct a scheme like what you describe, and that he could pull it off without alerting his "evil handlers".
If you are right, then he would probably become a superhero in many people's minds.

[CvillePatrick]

That was beautiful. Thanks for posting it.

[widollar]

John McCain has shown a total lack of "Country First" by his hasty selection of Sarah Palin. She is totally unprepared to step into the top spot should McCain become ill. McCain has become a "sellout politician" like all others before him. Victory at all costs is his new motto. Bad way to run a country Johnny Boy. Hopefully, Obama will be voted into office and then this Sarah Palin mess and total embarrassment will not matter. But he is finished for anything beyond this election. When he loses, he will probably retire from politics, as well he should. He is a very tired vindictive old man with no good ideas for cleaning up the horrible mess created by the corrupt Bush regime, and who is dangerous to the world.

[NYC26]

McCain picked a person whom he had met once for 15 minutes and then spoke with on the phone for 5 minutes.

Obama picked a colleague whom he has known and worked with in the course of for four years.

That selection process says everything about judgment?

[cylindar]

McCain is obviously not right in the head. Sarah Palin for whatever good qualities she might have is not VP material. She is a whacko religionist who is living in the middle ages by fighting witches for god's sake. In a way I like her, she is good looking, has a nice butt, and most of all I like her courage for standing up to the Alaska elite. This woman however does not have the skills necessary to compete on the national and international stage. I wish she did even though I disagree with her philosophy of life, religion etc.. She should bow out now before she makes a total mess of things. It is important for someone to know their place and she is one person who should search for her real calling and get out now while she has a chance to save her reputation.

[troika]

No, she should not bow out. I would love to see her at the debate being mangled by Biden. So much for vetting and accepting without a BLINK.

[foxymama]

Cylindar-I agree with what you said. I think that she should put family first in this instance. When you have a newborn with down syndrome. the most important time of the child's life is the first 3 years of life. This is when the child get the educational building blocks to build on future success. All children need these blocks, but kids with ds need it even more.
There are many other qualified canidates (both male and female) that are up to the job. I'm an independant. So I try to look pro and con at each person running. If McCain really wanted a female vp, there is a woman from Texas named Sen Kaye Baily Hutchson. I don't agree with everything she says, but she is smart, articulate, and experienced. She has served in the senate for several years. She has paid her dues. Sen. Hutchison is the republican version of Sen. Clinton.

[d97864]

The more reckless choice in this election was the Democrat primary voters choosing Obama. The fact is he has very little experience, and very few, if any, accomplishments. These are objective facts, not opinion. Palin is inexperienced, yes. She is not running for President. Why does she scare the same people who are so over the moon for Obama? The answer is, you are scared of her for a different reason...b­ecause she will put McCain over the top.

[William1950]

ummm no, I am afraid that IF she remains and somehow McCain wins, and if then somehow his health declines that we would be stuck with a nitwit ( another ) for president. And then we would all have to take up moose killing and drop rocks on wolves from airplanes.

[andrushka]

I am getting slowly fed up with the argument that Obama is inexperienced. Was GWB more experienced in 2000 when he was "elected". Come on now , try to be more honest in your arguments next time, for example, he is not white enough or American enough,.et­c.....

[troika]

She has been only been a mayor of a small town and a governor of a small state (Im going only by the population) Her experience as a governor is full of holes. Stays at home for 313 days and claims per diem, scandal TROOPERGATE , accepting gifts to the tune of $25,000 in the first 20 months, cannot put two sentences cogently, thinks that Russia and Canada being Alaska"s neighbors is enough to have foreign relations expertise. Obama may not have the experience, but unlike Palin he does not muddle up things. He can articulate on any issue. Go figure out. She is not a VP material.

[HipHopYouKNOW]

Open your eyes-McC is 72 years (very) old-he would be the oldest president EVER, and he is in POOR HEALTH!! What do you think-that he's immortal because he's a Republican, or something-the prognosis is bad, bad, bad! I wouldn't have voted for McC no matter who his running mate was, but because I know there are people who prefer to have a Repug despite the credentials of the Repug, I have reason to be very, very concerned. That is the point people are making here-that if you say "County First", you show it by doing things that choosing a viable running mate who can hold his or her own in an interview. Not a bumbling idiot-Ms. Falin's experience with seeing Russia out of her kitchen window does NOT qualify her for VP. I see a lot of things from my kitchen window, too, but I'm not crazy enough to use THAT as a basis for running for office. I don't think it's hard to understand the concern here. Senator Obama has more experience with real issues than she has ever had-her resume shows it! Why don't you try reading it, and think about what it says about her "experience" - looking out of a window and seeing something is NOT EXPERIENCE for anything of any importance.

[Scorpio13]

What nonsense.I­f you check the library of congress you will find that obama has done quite a lot for a fellow who supposedly has done nothing. Educate yourself before you sound off. And as far as her putting him over the top because of idiots with one track minds, that would be a travesty. Lord have mercy on us all. She is a total airhead.

[BJ2745]

Not to nitpick, but FDR died on, I believe, April 12th, and the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th. It wasn't even tested until early July.

[GBGB]

Very good article. It is refreshing to see the Huffington Post have an article that is critical of McCain and Palin (or any other Republican for that matter) yet still be articulate, accurate, well-reasoned, and professional. Bravo to you.
If the Huffington Post wants to try to convince Independents or moderate Republicans to vote for Obama, it should have more articles like this. Most of the articles on these pages are nothing more than angry rants full of logical holes that do nothing more than preach to the choir.