[Forgot to post this last night.]
I'm sorry if you're getting sick of my newfound obsession with Sarah Palin, but I just can't even begin to wrap my mind around all the contradictions that are being employed to pretend that she's the least bit appropriate for the job of vice-president of the United States. And so I must burden you with my thoughts as I work them out. I think I've isolated the three biggest flip-flops of common sense that are being bandied about.
1. A week ago, the McCain campaign wanted us to think about experience in terms of John McCain's military service and Barack Obama's short tenure on the national scene. Today, they'd like us to think about experience solely in terms of "executive experience." They keep saying "Sarah Palin has more executive experience that Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined." It makes me fall out of my chair every time because they forget to ad John McCain to that list. It would be hysterical if it weren't so fucking obtuse. They're actually undercutting the readiness of their own candidate by making executive experience the high water mark.
2. SImilarly, a week ago the McCain campaign was attacking Obama for failing to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket. The American people, they argued, had taken a good, hard look at Hillary Clinton and decided that, [despite her lack of executive experience], she was ready for and deserving of the job. The implication here is that primary votes are as important as any kind of real-world experience, that they validate a candidate's qualification for a job that has rather ambiguous resume requirements. They would like us to promptly forget that argument now that Sarah Palin has been nominated without having been put through that kind of test.
3. John McCain's big slogan is "Country First." What they mean, in this instance, this week, is that Democrats should have nominated a candidate who is as blindly, stubbornly, and obviously "patriotic" as John McCain. What they mean, in this instance, this week, is that John McCain puts country first by selecting a candidate that suits the most ideologically extreme wing of his party, regardless of her gravitas and readiness to hold the office.
I'm trying very hard to see it from the other side. I'm trying desperately to imagine how I would have felt if Barack Obama had nominated San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsome, just because he is an aggressively pro-gay rights, pro-universal health care, immigrant-sympathizing environmentalist. Now I agree with all of those positions - and the city of San Francisco has nearly a hundred thousand more residents than the state of Alaska - but I daresay I still would have been outraged and disappointed in the extreme. I would be working my ass off to undo what was done before the convention formally nominated a neophyte who has no business being anywhere near a presidential ticket. I certainly wouldn't be pretending, with all my might, that he was the best possibly choice my candidate could have made. John McCain has made a sick fucking joke not only out of himself but by all the people who are clamoring to cover up his ridiculous mistake.
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