Confronting Mortality

John McCain and his remaining stalwarts are making their final pitch to voters, and they are resting their case on McCain's experience. McCain's ads say that Barack Obama is "not ready to lead . . . yet." Charles Krauthammer, for example, put it bluntly by asking "Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.?" Editorial pages supporting McCain similarly laud McCain's "substance over style" and assert that "in this time of great anxiety, the American people need a leader of experience guiding the ship of state." Conspicuously absent from these endorsements is a mention of Sarah Palin.

It is both irresponsible and irrational for anyone endorsing McCain to laud his experience while ignoring his running mate, who has proven since her introduction to the national stage that she is woefully uninformed about the complex problems facing Americans at home and abroad. Her claim to fame, which she pressed time and again, is that she is a regular hockey mom. And McCain's own advisors have admitted that they made no effort to appraise her substantive knowledge before she was added to the ticket.

A running mate this unqualified for national office would be disturbing in any event, but it is downright frightening considering McCain's life expectancy. McCain would be 72 years and 4 months when taking the oath of office. The average life expectancy for an American male is a little more than 75 years, meaning that the law of averages puts the odds against McCain living out his first term.

Indeed, the prognosis for McCain is likely to be worse than that. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 5 ½ years, and the life expectancy for Vietnam prisoners of war is even lower than the national average. He has already had four malignant melanomas removed, one of which might have been a stage three cancer. He takes diuretics for treating high blood pressure. He was a two-pack-per-day smoker for 25 years. His father died of a stroke at age 70, his grandfather died at 61.

These sober facts should have led John McCain to select his running mate with his own mortality in mind, for the odds are high that he will not survive a first term in office. Putting country first should have meant picking a number two ready to lead from day one. John McCain's own test for leadership and the one repeated by his supporters to this day is experience, a qualification Palin sorely lacks.

Perhaps McCain should be forgiven for failing to confront his own mortality. Studies show that people frequently have an "optimistic bias" about their life expectancy and underestimate risks to their safety and health. Indeed, one of the reasons for the regulatory state is to set safety and health standards because individuals do not rationally assess those risks for themselves.

The question now is how voters will assess the fact that there is a high likelihood that Sarah Palin will assume the presidency.

John McCain and those endorsing him in the media are banking on the fact that voters will share McCain's optimistic bias about his health. By framing this election as about who answers that red phone in dangerous times, they want voters to see McCain picking it up. In fact, it is likely that Sarah Palin will take the call. It is up to the country to decide how optimistic they want to be about that scenario.