#58 The Vetting of Sarah Palin

I love that title. I used it yesterday in an email to a friend, and it sounded so...so...film noir-ish. The first Film Noir was apparently a 1948 RKO production called "Stranger on the Third Floor." I don't know if Sarah Palin has a third floor to her house, but omyword is she a stranger to the public.

Bottom line: John McCain acted impulsively to secure his Republican ultra-conservative base, did NOT vet her very well, and ignored the advice of his close advisors. Yet, it may work out for him. P.T. Barnum said, "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public," as people, walking past the caged animals, followed the signs "to the Egress."

The bloggers' rumors about Palin started almost immediately upon her selection: her fifth child, the bloggers perhaps erroneously reported, is really her grandson, Bristol's child. As a result of those internet rumors, she has had to make public that seventeen year old Bristol is currently pregnant, will keep the baby, and will marry the baby's father. I'm just waiting for the internet folk to ask the question, Is this pregnancy actually Bristol's second?

Too much in the way of evil rumors can backfire on the rumor-mongers, and create a sympathy vote for Sarah Palin. That is understandable, but it would be misplaced.

True sympathy should be with the American people, who may end up with another term of a Republican administration. Some analysts have assumed McCain was hoping to get the votes of some of Hillary's disaffected female supporters, who may still be angry with Obama. That would be a horribly patronizing view of women by McCain, and is currently not being supported by the polls. The women who will vote for McCain because he put SP on his ticket would have come around to vote for him anyway. They are the extreme right wing, fundamentalist, anti-choice, hypocritical, "family values" folk.

Don't you wish I'd stop being shy and start speaking my mind? In this election, it's the Democratic candidates with the true family values.

Now that the tickets are set (assuming the Republicans do put Palin on the ticket this week), the Democrats need to do at least three things:

(1) Given the amount of negative campaigning that has already occurred, mainly by the Republicans, the Democrats would do well to find some innocuous way to call attention to McCain's impulsiveness and his quick temper. A person with those qualities is too dangerous to be trusted with having to make monumental decisions quickly--or at all.

(2) The Democrats might blow it once again, but they have been handed THE golden opportunity to seize the middle of the political spectrum in this election. John McCain is a conservative in his political positions, but not conservative enough to appeal to the far-right Republican base, so he has chosen as his running mate someone who stands so far right that she risks falling off the edge of the earth. With Joe Biden on the ticket, the Democrats have a legitimate chance to be the centrists in this election.

(3) Finally, the Democrats would do well to say little about Sarah Palin. They can concentrate on McCain and the issues, and let the media do whatever background checking on Palin their investigative journalists want to do. Let the media investigate the potential "troopergate" scandal already brewing in Alaska, and anything else they want to check up on.

Very little is known about her: I find it amazing that Palin spent her junior and senior years at the University of Idaho, and the local press has yet to find anyone who actually knew her well enough to say something positive OR negative. One professor acknowledged that she was in one of his classes, but didn't really know much about her. Several students--including the president of the student government while she was at UI--said the same: 'we didn't really know much about her' is the point they've all made. Except for one student who apparently did know her: this former classmate admitted being "really surprised that she was chosen to be--Vice President??!"

Not a ringing endorsement of one's classmate.

But given the appetite of the press, the vetting of Sarah Palin has just begun.