Harvard's Election 2008 Blog

 

I certainly don't agree with many of Sarah Palin's political views.  However, I do feel images, such as the one above are innapropriate.  Amusing certainly, but innapropriate. Whatever Palin's veiws on sex-ed and the consequences of those views for the public, her daughter made a choice to have unprotected sex.  This decision, no matter how poorly it reflects on her mother, is not an election issue. It is a family issue, which should be delt with in private.  Her mother's life and choices may be fair game, but Bristol Palin's choices and mistakes are not relevent to the election. She should be allowed privacy to deal with her pregnancy and future life as a married teen mom.

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There has been some chatter around here of a Romney revolt: apparently, there had, at one point, been talk that Romney was sent home at McCain's request because numerous state delegations wanted to nominate Mitt Romney for vice president, instead of the now-embattled vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.  Romney is scheduled to speak today about John McCain, change, big government, and McCain-Palin, among other topics.  According to the RNC, about Palin, he will say that:

"Just like you, there has never been a day when I was not proud to be an American. We inherited the greatest nation in the history of the earth. It is our burden and privilege to preserve it, to renew its spirit so that its noble past is prologue to its glorious future. To this we are all dedicated and I firmly believe by the providence of the Almighty, that we will succeed. President McCain and Vice President Palin will keep America as it has always been - the hope of the world."  

Very general and not exactly glowing praise of Palin.

Yesterday, Romney spoke to the Massachusetts delegation about how he is in this campaign for the cause of restoring conservative values in Washington and not because it's about him.

If something were to go down today-and we remain skeptical that it will-it could cause profound change for the GOP in the long run, though it may damage the campaign this time.

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As you'd expect after such a surprise pick, I've heard a lot of reactions to the Sarah Palin pick flying around - some supportive, some skeptical.

Most of the  responses seem to focus on Palin's inexperience and how it will affect the campaign.  I've heard people say Obama's inexperience will make it hard for him to attack Palin for being inexperienced (see below), and I've heard people say Palin's inexperience will make it hard for McCain to attack Obama for being inexperienced (see below!).  There is, of course, a big difference between the impact of "inexperience" on the top of the ticket and "inexperience" on the bottom, but McCain's nominee was always going to face extra scrutiny on this count because of McCain's age, something his campaign obviously realized.  And maybe, in Palin's case, the argument's not about experience itself.  Maybe "picturing a young, attractive, kooky, female governor from Alaska who has an accent straight out of Fargo in the White House is going to be a much bigger leap for many voters than picturing Barack Obama there."

To some, of course, all this analysis can be a bit overwhelming.  To quote Palin's father Chuck, "I'd rather go moose hunting than be involved with politics."

Law profs have been among those blogging it up.  Orin Kerr is "cautiously optimistic" about Palin and wonders if a norm is shifting and tickets with two white men are going to become relatively rare.  Jim Lindgren points to an online forum for Hillary supporters who are apparently gushing with support for Palin.  On the other hand, David Post is betting that she'll make a major gaffe during the campaign, and Dan Markel voiced the same thought that's been in the back of my mind: whether picking a comparative unknown might eventually lead to the same sort of backlash that doomed Harriet Miers.  (Choosing a running mate isn't so different from nominating Supreme Court justices or Cabinet officials, after all: it's the first indicator of what personal qualities a presidential candidate might look for in such an appointee.)

Forwarded from the Pforzheimer House email list: Palin wrote an op-ed in January for the New York Times which opposed placing polar bears on the endangered species list. 

And over at fivethirtyeight.com, Steve Quinn muses that Palin might bait Joe Biden into a particularly devastating gaffe in the vice presidential debate, while Nate Silver probably has the quote of the day: "Palin is the most manifestly ordinary person ever to be nominated for a major party ticket."  Whether that will work in her favor (and McCain's) remains to be seen.

 At the end of the day, I still think picking Palin was a smart move, but it's definitely also a gamble.

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It looks like Sarah Palin, the second-year Alaska governor, is John McCain's veep nominee.

Picking a pro-choice, pro-death penality, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, female governor from Alaska plays to several key constituancies for McCain.  It appeals to embittered Hillary supporters; women; oil interests; coal interests; auto interests; rust belters; religious/"value "voters;  and, perhaps peripherally, minorities.  If McCain can convince voters that the GOP isn't the party of old white men, he might be able to access some new voters.

And I don't now about you, but does this one-time Miss Alaska runner-up look faintly Latina, and have a faintly Latina last name?  We'll see how this plays out.

 Is this who you would trust to run the country if John McCain's age and cancer catches up with him?  I look forward to the reaction from the Obama camp.

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... says the New York Times.

She'd been mentioned a lot earlier this summer but had unaccountably fallen off the radar over the past week or two.  But I think she's a pretty smart pick, as a Washington outsider and especially as someone who mirrors McCain's "maverick" storyline.  She's challenged Alaska's Republican establishment and - get this - personally killed the Bridge to Nowhere.  It'll be interesting to see whether the campaign tries to ignore the Ted Stevens controversy or actively campaigns on it (citing the fact that Palin supported the probe into Stevens's finances).

Romney was probably just too rich to be picked (imagine Housegate II).  I don't know that much about Pawlenty, positive or negative.  Lieberman would have been a dramatic and gutsy pick: it would have strengthened McCain's appeal to independents immeasurably and made it easier to cast Obama-Biden as far-left liberals, but it would have outraged the conservative base (as Palin notably does not).  And it would have made for a very awkward convention in St. Paul.

I'm unconvinced that this makes it a slam dunk for McCain to bring in disaffected Hillary supporters, but picking a woman certainly couldn't hurt.

My thoughts on Obama's speech and the DNC to follow later today.  (See, this was exactly why McCain announced today!  The one way to draw the spotlight 12 hours after Obama's speech.  A few people speculated that he'd do it yesterday, overshadowing the speech, but that would have looked really bad.  Better to do it today.)

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Sorry for showing up a little late to comment on the Joe Biden speech, but I spent the aftermath of the speech sobbing hysterically and then woke up in tears only to begin thesis research. Thanks, Joe.

But before I get to that, I should address Sam's last post on Hillary's speech, in which he brings up the "I guess I should mention Obama and get myself out of trouble" part of the speech. I agree that that was tactfully written and, on paper, an extremely moving use of rhetoric. Maybe I'm just biased, or maybe Hillary has lost her touch and it's painfully obvious how much she wants Obama to lose so she can run in 2012. Again, I realize I am a new convert to the Obama center-left, and I may be blinded by previous prejudice, but there was something in her tone that I just didn't buy.

Same with Bill Clinton's speech. The words were there on paper. They were spoken, and they reached my ears. But perhaps due to the past- Whitewater, Rwanda, Kosovo, Monica Lewinsky, Bosnia sniper fire- no words could possibly convince me that they're being sincere, or that they are capable of such.

And nothing made the former president's sneering cynicism clearer than the purity of message in the act following him- Vice President Joe Biden and his family. Introduced by his son Beau in one of the most eloquent and appreciative expressions of respect between father and son that has ever graced the political world (take that, Luke Russert), Biden made politics about family. His speech was about love, about dignity, about all those values that I've been voting Republican for all these (two) years. Only a cold heart could have not felt moved by his resilience and call for the same from his nation.

But all this fits perfectly into the image we had of Obama's campaign before. Romantic visions of a loving, peaceful America are nothing new to the New Democrats. What really made Biden's speech golden- and what solidified my support for the Obama-Biden ticket and that of many other distraught libertarians with foreign policy concerns, is the following excerpt:

In recent days, we've once again seen the consequences of this neglect with Russia's challenge to the free and democratic country of Georgia. Barack Obama and I will end this neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we'll help the people of Georgia rebuild.

I've been on the ground in Georgia, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms: this administration's policy has been an abject failure. America cannot afford four more years of this.

The reaffirmation of the Russian superpower is the greatest threat America has seen since the Cold War. Yes, 9/11 was atrocious and will live forever in infamy in our memories (especially for those of us that were right across the river when the planes crashed in), but the culprits of those crimes are disorganized and weak, splintered by the brilliant work that everyone refuses to acknowledge the Bush administration did. Joe Biden's response to this threat is to stand up to Russia, to promise that he will only take diplomacy so far- as far as possible and not an inch more.

John McCain's response? Sending Cindy over to Georgia with freshl-baked cookies, or whatever it is women do.

 

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I should preface this experience by noting how much irrational loathing I have for that antiquated communication device that is the telephone. It is loud, obnoxious, makes your ears sweat, and requires undivided attention for use. It has been obsolete ever since Al Gore invented the internet, and my blood usually boils whenever I am forced to use it. I have broken my fair share of cell phones due to various circumstances, but all have been via the smashing of the phone against a wall. Text messages are not exempt from this hatred- they cost 10¢ each and take way to long to write. Not to mention that they cost 10¢, and I am stingy.

So imagine how disgruntled I was when I found out that America's next president was a fan of this shameful form of communication- so much so that he was announcing his Veep via text message? Well, actually, I was a bit amused at the time. And I am compelled to tell my story, especially after a bit of conjecture by the Harvard Dems (yes, I belong to their email list) regarding the matter, where one loyal member defined the question of our generation as "Where were you when the text was sent?"

Before I start, let me state for the record that our generation classifies texts in the following categories: any text received during the day is simply a txt; any received between the hours of 11:30 PM and 2 AM is a "drunken txt", and anything after that but before dawn is a "booty txt". There is no need to explain why.

So, back to the matter at hand: where was I when Barack Obama booty txted all of America? Well, given that the text was sent at 3:30 AM, I was soundly asleep, enjoying a very pleasant dream where I was lying on a beach in Greece, listening to Elena Paparizou and feeling the sun burn my back as I sipped a strawberry daiquiri. Now, friends, going from life in mega-urban New Jersey to the wonderful shores of Ellas is truly change I can believe in, but the only change that came to me was the change from the peaceful purring of Mediterranean breeze to the obnoxious vibrating beep of my cell phone. The wretched communication instrument refused to slience until it had my undivided attention. I opened it reluctantly to see I had a message from "62262"- the numerical equivalent of the letters "Obama"- and there it was: "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee."

Really??

At first I thought this was a prank. Surely the real Barack Obama wouldn't wake up all his supporters (yes, all his supporters are in the Eastern time zone) at 3 AM to tell them something that MSNBC had been saying for weeks. Plus, isn't Joe Biden racist or something? I didn't know- he was always too boring to investigate. Either way, someone was getting a nasty email tomorrow when I woke up and got a real Obama text saying Evan Bayh was the real pick.

But then I went back to sleep and woke up to the same exact news as last night. I even got this wonderful begging email!

I don't even have a driver's license- what do I want a car magnet for?

That was my full testimonial of the epic Barack Obama text-message stunt. And, in terms of serious political analysis, I give it a mixed review. The fact that news agencies were announcing the truth hours before the text was sent out would lose Obama swing votes that were awake at the time and feel deceived. Those that were asleep, like myself, were angered that Obama had the nerve to wake them from their sleep to tell them something that Biden himself had said was untrue all of last week. He started off his full-ticket campaign on a lie. And that, after the Iraq War debacle, doesn't really sound like change at all. Neither does putting a 35-year career senator on your ticket.

 

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Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his Vice President reflects a strong long-term strategy that plays to many of the concerns about Obama while keeping with the main themes of the campaign.  In Biden is a long-time Washington fixture who isn't a Washington insider; a politician who is well-known enough to be credible but has a small-enough cross-section to not drag; and someone who is vitriolic and critical enough to add a new voice to the campaign and speak his own mind, but experienced enough not to cause problems.

Biden also brings age and experience.  At 65, he brings the "oldness" the Obama campaign needs-he is closer in age to resemble John McCain's run eight years ago-without being a skeleton.

Obama's life experience in Chicago, Boston, New York City, Hawaii, and Indonesia are well-complimented by Biden's life-long experience in Wilmington, Delaware, which is as rusty as any city out there, making the combination appealing to big-city liberals, rust-belt democrats and undecideds.  It also splashes an acknowledgement of practical realism on fresh-faced Obama's saccharine, exceedingly optimistic campaign.  All of these temper concerns and criticisms that Obama is arrogant or out of touch.

And, of course, Biden himself brings a lot to the table where a lot is needed: is a heavy-hitter in foreign policy and is the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

There are, of course, some drawbacks: the New York Times pointed out that some of his controversy has involved racial insensitivity, including racially charged comments about Obama being "clean" and "articulate," and saying that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."  This alone shouldn't concern the campaign: it's Obama, after all.  Race won't sink the ship.

Also, his middle name is Robinette.  What's with that?

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I agree with Sam that the drumbeat of running mate speculation is starting to get a little monotonous. But I think the delay might actually be good strategy for Obama, for a couple reasons.

1. Building up a crescendo of press speculation is a good way to cut through the Olympics coverage. Naming a running mate is one of the biggest moments of a presidential campaign, and when the nation's collective attention is focused on Beijing, it's natural that Obama would need to do a little more than he otherwise would to draw that attention. That's why Obama hasn't opted for a drop-of-the-hat announcement: it's easy to picture it getting lost amidst the excitement of Phelps Phest, for instance. Keeping the VP choice on everybody's mind for a week is definitely the best way to undermine that focus on the Olympics. (This issue didn't come up in 2004, by the way, because Kerry named Edwards as his choice on July 6 - and the DNC was two and a half weeks before the Olympics that year, after all.)

2. Sean Quinn at FiveThirtyEight.com points out that, right now, McCain has handed Obama perhaps the best sound bite he's had for a week or two by forgetting just how many houses he owns. It's a bad gaffe, and why shouldn't the Obama campaign milk it for all it's worth for a few days before announcing his choice?

A further observation from FiveThirtyEight (a personal favorite, due to their detailed electoral vote projections and thorough polling analysis): the buildup makes it much more difficult for the Obama to unveil a surprise. A dark horse candidate risks being anticlimactic after all the speculation. That's compounded by the Obama campaign's offer to text message his choice to anyone who signs up: millions of people "furiously checking Wikipedia" is not the best way to build a narrative for your running mate.

If I had to guess who the pick is, by the way, I'd probably say Tim Kaine, mainly just because of Virginia's role as a swing state. But I really have no idea who Obama has picked - and I think he might want it that way for a few more days.

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