What the Palin Pick Says

by René | September 7, 2008 at 06:02 am

824 views | 33 Recommendations | 24 comments

Here's a different look at the Palin Pick from New York Times columnist, David Brooks:

Op-Ed Columnist, By DAVID BROOKS, ST. PAUL

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

You can read the rest of his column here:

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

bill hicks

at 06:32 on September 7th, 2008

We can use a shake up.

McCain is not a conservative and the radios talk shows a year ago prove it. They all fought him. McCain knows everything about everyone in Congress, both parties. If they do not assassinate him, the crooks are done in. Our biggest enemy now is not the terrorists but the entrenched politicians and beaurocrats. McCain is hard headed enough to do something about it.

Palin even though she is far from perfect and I agree with the moral and political philosphy statement, she and her family have the guts to stand up for what is right. She will not be bought out or blackmailed.

Carter tried to do the came thing. I voted for him. He caved in to Tip O'Neal and his presidency became a total farce. I do not think that will happen with McCain. I also think a lot of conservatives will be a little ticked off at first but then realize McCain is out for the good of both conservative and liberal thinking.

bill hicks

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:33 on September 7th, 2008

René, I like this story. It's good stuff.

joellerose

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 07:27 on September 7th, 2008

René, I like this story. It's good stuff. At last, a fair story about McCain and Palin in the New York Times and on NowPublic. Thank you for posting it, especially when I just got finished sending the following letter to the Providence Journal:

"I suppose someone at the Journal must have felt they needed to balance the Journal’s editorial detailing the lobbying activities of Senator Biden’s son, Hunter, with an article attacking Sarah Palin, but did you have to run such a smear piece as was done by Froma Harrop?

Some of the points made by Harrop, and I quote:

“Palin supporters insist that her out-of-control home life will resonate with many American families. Yes, if they’re from Mars or perhaps on welfare.”

“What a McCain presidency now promises is another four years of Terry Schiavo…”

“The Schiavo case, creationism and similar excesses…”

First of all I Googled Sara Palin and Terry Schiavo and could find no reference as to anything Palin said about or did about the Schiavo case. Some left-wing blogs are suggesting that she might have, given her Christian background. Is Ms. Harrop relying on suggestions from blogs to pick up her material?

On creationism, Ms. Harrop does what so many liberal columnists do today, they deliberately confuse Intelligent Design with Creationism to portray ID supporters as knuckle-dragging morons married to their first cousins. Palin is supportive of teaching both evolutionary biology and the questions and problems raised – a subject called Intelligent Design. This is hardly out of the mainstream since surveys consistently show over 70% of Americans have these questions.

I quote from the New York Times, ”Whatever similarities Ms. Palin and Senator Barack Obama may have in personal appeal, they seem to have little else in common. She is a conservative Protestant and has also been a member since 2006 of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group. She has supported the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, alongside evolution.” NYT, 8/30/08

bill hicks

at 07:53 on September 7th, 2008

There is a real interesting thing about creation that has been kept hidden. The Big Bang theory that most scientists subscribe to happened in less than a second determined by the top mathematicians in the last few years. It is not spoken about much because if it is true then the speed of light which scientists also know is slowing, actually was much faster than believed at the onset of the universe. The billion light years away is calculated using the current speed of light not the speed that was a million times faster. They also know but keep quiet the fact that carbon breakdown has slowed even faster and carbon dating is only accurate to 4000 years ago. Their dating of fossils is a relative position based on their placement in earth strata. The base is determined by three sites around the world that confom to each other. That base is totally proven to be false by over 40 other sites that do not correspond to the three. Sort of like the pig jaw bone proving in an Arkansas court that humans existed 50 thousand years ago so evolution has to be correct. Smart liberals know all that is a lie and do not care. The dumb ones will believe anything a liberal tells them as proven here.

joellerose

at 08:09 on September 7th, 2008

Sorry, Bill, if you are trying to support me and also saying that the earth and its fossils are only 4000 years old, I don't buy it. There are aspects of neo-Darwinism that I think modern science has disproved, but that is not one of them.

BruceC

at 10:03 on September 7th, 2008

He did not mean 4000 years old but only carbon dating is only accurate to 4000 years. Actually from Adam to now it is more like 6000 years. The fossil issue in the strata is interesting because there are more sites totally repudiating the 3 site basis. It is another pig jaw bone. I don't know why such an important issue should be clouded by falsehoods to explain any one agenda. All information should be looked at scientifically with an open mind.

If you can not agree with that then there is no reason to discuss anything.

Fairbanks

at 08:18 on September 7th, 2008

Carbon dating is more interesting than McCain.

Emilio Lizardo

at 09:11 on September 7th, 2008

Carbon Dating
The technique of radiocarbon dating was developed by Willard Libby and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1949.[2] Libby estimated that the steady state radioactivity concentration of exchangeable carbon-14 would be about 14 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per gram. In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work. He first demonstrated the accuracy of radiocarbon dating by accurately measuring the age of wood from an ancient Egyptian royal barge whose age was known from historical documents.

Dating John McCain

[T]he righteous GOP have never lied or slept around on their spouses. Just ask Cindy McCain. Here's what she said on rumors of an affair between John McCain and lobbyist, Vicki Iseman : "More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He's a man of great character."

Cindy McCain met and began dating John McCain when he was married. So, Cindy met John when he was cheating on his wife, but she knows he'd never cheat on his wife. Right.

joellerose

at 09:41 on September 7th, 2008

Thanks for spreading another vicious lie about John McCain, who was legally separated from his first wife when he met Cindy.

PEP

at 09:53 on September 7th, 2008

joellerose, don't offend the righteous Puritans of the left, those who supported Clinton and Edwards. Too bad McCain didn't commit adultery in the White House with a young intern and then commit perjury--he then could have become a Democratic star. Then there's Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne. My, I wonder how her parents (if they're still alive) felt about that big tribute to him the Demos staged? John Edwards upped his speaking fee, and then once again retired from public speaking. Guess the Demos figured out that there were enough "other people" out there who would be disgusted by a man cheating on a wife dying of cancer that they finally shut him up, at least for a while.

Liberals and leftists are so hypocritical when they get going on McCain being divorced and remarried, just as they are about caring about people and compassion. Yea, compassion and caring about others leads you straight to savaging teenagers.

I remember the old Democratic party, the one that did good works. But it's gone now, overtaken by the wannebe Maoists and leftists who'd like to judge everyone else, punish everyone else who disagrees with them, and in general, control everything until they give America away to entitlement and its enemies. The non-worker's paradise, doncha know. ;}

Emilio Lizardo

at 12:41 on September 7th, 2008

John McCain: From Orange Park to White House?
Sunday, July 20, 2008

"Off duty, usually on routine cross-country flights to Yuma and El Centro, John started carousing and running around with women," author Robert Timberg wrote in The Nightingale's Song, a book about the rise of several Annapolis graduates after the Vietnam War.

McCain has admitted his failings. His former wife told Timberg she did not think her accident or the war was to blame.

joellerose

at 13:51 on September 7th, 2008

You are really a piece of work.

Rob Walker

at 14:05 on September 7th, 2008

Let's keep the conversation on topic and no sideways insults, shall we?

dunkelberg

at 13:58 on September 7th, 2008

You might want to have quoted from that article you referenced.

She {McCain's second wife} taught at Agua Fria High School in Arizona before meeting John McCain in 1979, when he was still married to (though separated from) his first wife.

Then again, maybe wouldn't.

joellerose

at 14:02 on September 7th, 2008

I don't get your point. People who are separated are free to date. After Clinton, what does this have to do with anything anyway?

Emilio Lizardo

at 14:31 on September 7th, 2008

Maybe the point is anybody is free to do anything they want whenever they want to do it ... it is a person's character which determines finally what is or is not done ... isn't that what the whole gun-control debate is about ?

Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain
Phillip Butler | March 27, 2008

As some of you might know, John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy ... In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I'm disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don't see that John is the "straight talk express" he... markets himself to be.

René

at 07:51 on September 7th, 2008

Thanks for the comments, Joel and Bill, I thought we needed a little balance here. Also think The Maverick is going to pleasantly surprise everyone but the 'bad guys'.

Rhonda J Mangus

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 07:59 on September 7th, 2008

René, I like this story. It's good stuff.

BruceC

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 10:09 on September 7th, 2008

René, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Who knew this would stir up a little controversy.

hotelcal

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:10 on September 7th, 2008

René, I like this story. It's good stuff.

dunkelberg

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:43 on September 7th, 2008

Well, she courted and was endorsed by Stevens. She requested earmarks that McCain publicly criticized. She was deperately seeking earmarks up until last week.

Yes, she and McCain both are willing to substiture expediency and advancement for principles and advancement.