Charles Kaiser on McCain's McGovern Moment

McCain's McGovern Moment

"If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have."
-Barack Obama, Mile High Stadium, August 28, 2008

Everyone knows that the first important hurdle for every presidential nominee is his choice for vice president. Forget about the illegitimate child. Forget, even, about its hockey player father, who once wisely declared on his Facebook profile that he never wanted children. John McCain has shot himself in something much more vulnerable than his foot. He's made the most reckless choice for Vice President since George McGovern was forced to pick Tom Eagleton as his running mate in 1972, after McGovern's first five picks (Ed Muskie, Teddy Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, Abe Ribicoff and Gaylord Nelson) turned him down.

The parallels are precise because we now know that John McCain wanted to choose the thoroughly-vetted Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge, but his fear of the religious right led him instead to choose a ludicrously unqualified, and completely unvetted governor from one of the smallest states in the union.

The irony is searing because it was also Tom Eagleton's selection which changed the way vice presidents were chosen forever—until, that is, John McCain chose his. As Elisabeth Bumiller made clear in her superb story this morning, which is also the most important story of day, Palin was a last-minute pick made after a single 20-minute meeting between her and McCain.

The quotes in Bumiller's story are startling: "Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said [there was] widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket...'I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,' Ms. Phillips said. 'I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven't found anybody who was asked anything.'"

Equally startling was the rest of the news in the Times: "it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state's public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge."

Not to mention her strong support of Pat Buchanan for president, her rejection of evolution and global warming, and the single quality that seems to have made her irresistible to McCain and the wacko-right wing of his party: her supposedly extraordinary concern for the unborn, especially in the case of the child she carried to term, even though she knew he would have Down Syndrome.