* a breathtakingly reckless choice

Excerpted from a column E.J. Dionne September 01, 2008

McCain, as far as anyone can tell, met Palin only once before considering her for vice president, and once more before settling on her, which is to say he barely knows her. For the purpose of courting disaffected Hillary Clinton voters and satisfying the social conservatives, McCain is willing to place someone he knows mostly from press clippings in the direct line of succession to the presidency. There is a breathtaking recklessness about this choice.

McCain is asking us to roll the dice. You’d think that people who call themselves conservative would have a problem with that.

* Who is more inconsiderate? McCain or Palin?

 

The facts are dribbling out, as these things often do.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice to be VP, a 72 year old heartbeat away from the most important position in the world, announced today that her 17 year old unmarried daughter is 5 months pregnant.

The McCain campaign says it knew this before McCain chose Palin as his VP candidate.

Now, I propose a different election. Which one, McCain or Palin, is the more inconsiderate of anything or anyone except their own naked political ambition?

On one side, we have Gov. Palin, totally oblivious to the likely emotional damage to her daughter, and to the young boy, that must inevitably follow such a high profile examination of the serious mistakes they have made, mistakes no doubt helped along by soon-to-be grandmother Palin’s opposition to both sex education and contraception.

In the other column is John McCain, desperate to find any spark at all in his uninspired presidential bid, willing to take on an ultra right wing, family values woman, unconcerned that her serious personal family problems, of which he was aware, might obscure her alleged moral conservatism or her ability to pay much attention to the campaign or, God forbid, the job of being Vice President.

Kids get pregnant all the time, and it’s usually a mess.  Living this out in the public glare of a political campaign won’t help. The daughter, now 5 months pregnant, may or may not want to marry the father. The boyfriend, about whom we so far know nothing, may well not want marriage either. Do they love each other? They’ve had several months to get married, and they’re not yet, so there’s at least some likelihood that one or both would rather not. But I don’t suppose their mother intends to give them that choice.

None of this is any of our business, and wouldn’t have been, had not McCain and Palin chosen to make it so.

So who is worse, McCain for asking or Palin for saying yes? I think it would be a close election.

And shame on both of them for their selfish attitudes which don’t sound to me like good family values.

LEW

* Charley Cook on McCain’s VP choice

Charley Cook is a political reporter whose web site (www.cookpolitical.com) contains a lot of useful information. The 9-1-08 edition of the Cook Political Report (see below) is titled …

McCain’s Risky Dice Roll With Palin

Here are a few excerpts …

·         McCain found himself with fewer options than he wanted, and, and that reality, along with his overwhelming desire to shake things up, led him to the last-minute selection of Palin, who he had met only once (in February at a National Governors Association meeting) before the vetting process began.

·         Some McCain advisers are now saying that she was fully vetted, but others are sending signals that she underwent only the briefest and scantest of scrutiny.

·         If you put the pictures of every Republican governor in the country on a dartboard and thrown a dart, the chances of a better selection might be higher.

·         Picking Palin for vice president is an engraved invitation for critics to question and voters to wonder even more about McCain’s age (72) and health. Is the risk worth it?

·         It has been widely noted that McCain is a devoted craps player. This time he really rolled the dice.

Founded in 1984, The Cook Political Report is an independent, non-partisan newsletter that analyzes elections and campaigns for the US House of Representatives, US Senate, Governors and President as well as American political trends.