Saturday, August 30, 2008

Cutting to the Chase   [Jonah Goldberg]

I've been thinking about it and I think the bottom line on Palin is pretty simple. If she does a good job at the convention and survives about three weeks of serious media scrutiny — no horrible gaffes, no unforgivable I-don't-knows to gotchya questions (fair and unfair), no botched hostile interviews — she will emerge as the single most inspired VP pick in modern memory and she will give the Democrats migraines for a long time to come, assuming there are no terrible skeletons we don't know about. But, if she screws up in the next three weeks, gives the press and the late night comedians sufficient fodder to Quayelize her, she'll be seen as anything from a liability to an outright horrible pick. That's it.

Paul Begala's attacks on the Palin pick actually have some merit to them (I listened to a lot of CNN yesterday). He rebuffs the counter-argument that Obama's experience is no better — and arguably worse — than Palin's by saying, yeah, but 18 million people voted for Obama to be their party's nominee. Voters have scrutinized Obama and decided he's up to the job. That's how democracy works. Begala argues that Palin has enjoyed no such scrutiny. She's become the veep nominee based on one man's vote — McCain's — and that says a lot about McCain's judgment. I think that's a basically fair point. It's true that judgment is more important than experience (though I don't remotely buy that Obama's judgment is better than McCain's). So, again, it all comes down to whether Palin holds up under intense scrutiny. If it looks like this was purely a stunt, then McCain's critics will be right that his "country first" mantra rings a bit hollow. If, on the other hand, she proves to be as impressive as she seems, no one will care about how small Wasilla is.

All I can say is I hope McCain's vetters did their job and that she's not only up to it, but that she's doing her homework too.

08/30 01:58 PMShare