John McCain, Sarah Palin and Good and Evil

A reader responds: The jury is out on Johnny Mac's brilliance but [the Palin announcement] did upstage a great speech.

Out here [California], everyone thinks the Palin choice was not one of McCain's finest moments.

He seems to make snap decisions and views this complicated gray world in black and white moments of impulse.

If he picked her because "the base" would revolt on the convention floor if Ridge or Lieberman were chosen, then where is the “maverick” in him.

Why do you think he did not pick Huckabee (who can play a little bass as well as have somewhat of a grasp on things Republican?)

And I replied: I have to admit that Mike Huckabee's bass playing endeared him to me early on...and that he was my second pick for the nomination...after Fred Thompson.
I think Huckabee comes across as too much of a hick for McCain's tastes. Also, he does not really think out everything he says.
As for Lieberman and Ridge, they are pro-choice, which means that they would be spat out as readily by the GOP convention as a pro-life candidate would have been rejected by the Dems…had Obama selected one. Corollary: The Democrats will never nominate a pro-life candidate and the GOP will never nominate a pro-choice candidate.
Sarah Palin is a woman of surprising capacity. I have been reading and watching old interviews of her and she grasps the number one issue--energy--firmly and authoritatively. I also admire the way she has knocked down the GOP Corrupt Bastards Club's hold on the Alaska Government...and beat a windfall tax out of Big Oil that she turned over to individual Alaskans...and got the natural gas pipeline project started after 30 years of failed negotiations...
When McCain says he vetted her as thoroughly as the other candidates I believe him as he is an honorable man.

If McCain wasn't able to see nuances, he would not have been able to write campaign finance reform law with Russ Feingold or forge a deal on appointments of federal judges with Ted Kennedy, or write a bill on immigration reform both parties (but not the president) could heartily endorse... and play a major part in every bipartisan piece of senate legislation over the past 18 years or so...
McCain has a very keen sense of what is good and evil...a sense that was sharpened under five years of torture as a POW. That's why he can buck his president on the waterboarding issue.

It's fashionable now for people to say that there are no such things as "good" or "evil." Morality tends to be nuanced out of existence. Pat Moynahan called the process, "Dumbing deviancy down."
And yet, in this world there are some things that are decidedly good and decidedly evil. Evil exists in this world...metaphysically, spiritually, physically. The genocides in Darfur and Rwanda are and were evil. Racism is evil. Torture is evil --and we have no business doing it, because we are supposed to be the Good Guys... Nazism is evil. Crime for profit is evil ...even if the profit is only revenge or a sexual thrill. Starvation is evil. Sickness is evil (believe me I know). All forms of cruelty are evil.
Fortunately, the undisputedly good things are in much greater supply. Work is good, because it confers dignity. Familial love is good, because it banishes loneliness and selfishness. Erotic love is good...as long as the "love" part is not forgotten, and as long as it is loving and not using...Knowledge is good...Peace is good....unless it is a peace of fear that allows others to do evil things (see the rise of Nazi Germany as an example)...Charity is good...as long as it does not stand in the way of capable individuals finding work. Hope is good...if it makes us persevere and is grounded in at least a small but reasonable expectation of success…and what we hope for is itself neither selfish nor evil.
I don't dislike Obama. I think he is a good man. I just don't think his ideas will work. McCain comes closer to my way of thinking.

Obama is Right About Palin’s Family

I am willing to believe that Barack Obama has more class than many of his supporters. The Internet has been jumping for the past 60 hours with the nasty rumor that Trig Palin, the five month old baby of Sarah Palin is actually her granddaughter and that she was covering up for her daughter Bristol who, the Obamist bloggers say, was the real (and unwed) mother.

Today Governor Palin set matters straight. Bristol, 17, is pregnant –five months pregnant. The timing is such that if the initial rumors were true, she would have conceived her present baby while she was still expecting the other. Given how these bloggers think nature works, I would not be surprised if they thought that was possible, but believe me, it isn’t.

Obama, in the meantime, has spoken up about the rumors and Palin’s announcement making a statement for which he should be commended: “We don't go after people's families. We don't get them involved in the politics. It's not appropriate and it's not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought there was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they'd be fired.”

To make his point even clearer, Obama added, “This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.”

In their treatment of Sarah Palin and her family, the left blogosphere and the mainstream media are tying a big fat anchor rope around Barack Obama’s neck. If the Obama campaign can call ordinary criticism of their candidate “smear tactics,” then what do we call the slime being hurled at Sarah Palin and her family?

A lot of people have a lot to be ashamed of.

Shame on Alan Colmes for insinuating that Palin endangered the life of her unborn child (“Did Palin Take proper Pre-Natal Care?” The story is here. ) by finishing her day’s work in Texas when she had only leaked a trivial amount of amniotic fluid. She was not in contractions when she boarded an Alaska Air flight to go home, and made the trip after consulting with her doctor.

Shame on Andrew Sullivan and the Obamist blogosphere for passing around the Sarah Palin is a grandmother rumor. What a smarmy little piece of trash that was. People like Sullivan ought to know better.

Shame on the Daily Kos and blogger ArcXIX for pushing the above rumor. They do know better but apparently don’t care. And shame on the Kos bloggers nauseatingly rejoicing at the Palin family’s crisis.

Shame on Andrea Mitchell of NBC for stating, on “Meet the Press,” that college-educated persons will not want to vote for Mrs. Palin. Because why, Andrea? Because she is not part of the privileged political class to whom you relate so well? Your condescending tone, your arrogance is breathtaking.

Shame on Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift for denigrating and dismissing Palin on "The McLaughlin" group. I don’t know how many newsrooms she was in when McCain announced Palin on Friday. I doubt that, like a Catholic saint, Clift can bilocate and physically be in more than one place at a time. But Clift reported that, “This is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it's been literally laughter in many places…in very, very many newsrooms.” Hear the audio of this segment by clicking here (13 seconds, 80Kb).

Shame on Politico for disguising four Democratic Party stalwarts as uninterested “presidential historians.” They are David Kennedy (who has donated the maximum allowable amount of money to the Obama campaign), Joel Goldstein (also a cash donor),

Doris Kearns Goodwin (who has donated to the Party) and Matthew Dalleck (Dick Gephardt’s former speech writer). This is a nice way to disguise a rehash of Obamist talking points.

Shame on ABC’s Rick Klein and Jennifer Parker for calling the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy “A damaging revelation,” and then failing to prove that notion when interviewing Republicans and family-values sources at the convention --all of whom praised the decision of Miss Palin to keep her baby and praised the family values of Governor Palin.

Shame on CNN for using Bristol’s story as the basis of a hitpiece on her mother.

Shame on Morton Kondracke –who knows nothing more about the circumstances of Bristol’s pregnancy than we do-- for chiming in with the same criticism as the CNN hitpiece (see him here.)

There is a lot more shame to go around. Barack Obama says he is against the hyper-partisan “say anything to win” kind of politics seen in the last several elections. He says he is against making political hay with the children of candidates. I believe him. But the radical left doesn’t.

That’s not “change;” that’s more of the same.

McCain Turns Out to be Brilliant

John McCain, it turns out, is a genius.

His pick of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running-mate completely upstaged Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. As of Friday morning the putative brilliance of the speech was the only thing the press and the chattering class could talk about. If McCain had not announced his running mate when he did, they would still be talking about The Speech well into the Monday news cycle.

Instead, the topic is Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. The press is asking, “ Who is she? Is she qualified? What does she do for the ticket?”

Obama’s speech? Yesterday’s news. Oprah may have cried her false eyelashes off in vain.

Palin’s style, her accent, her politics and her values are all straight from the heartland –or as the coastal liberal elites call it, “Flyover Country.” With knee-jerk speed, the Obamists took a dismissive tone with Palin that the supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton will recognize at once.

The very first release from the Obama camp pooh-poohed Palin as the mayor of a small town. That she was, but as mayor she did things that Barack Obama has not yet done…such as manage a budget and a payroll and administer something larger than a charitable fund. As Governor of Alaska she has governed the largest state, in area, in the Union. She has mastered the complex issues of energy and the environment. She has managed a state budget in the billions of dollars.

Well, she’s only done that for two years, scoff the Obamists. But it’s two years more experience as a government executive than Barack Obama can boast of.

Obama has been hailed as a “post-partisan” politician, but it is Sarah Palin who is the genuine article. You’ve got to like the fact that her worst enemies in the state are Republican pols –the arrogantly self-described “Corrupt Bastards Club”-- whose bribe-taking from big oil and ethical lapses she fearlessly exposed and held to up to public scrutiny. How those Alaska Republicans despise her!

The Obamists are trying every talking point they can think of to gain traction against Palin: Does the selection of Palin indicate McCain’s judgment is too poor for the presidency? (On the contrary, it was a bold stroke of genius –see above.) McCain, it is complained. has “rolled the dice” on an ex-beauty queen (second place in the Miss Alaska pageant for which, I imagine, she got $10 and passed “Go.”).

The critics claim Palin’s pro-life views are too extreme (because she believed her unborn Down syndrome baby was a human being and because she brought him into the world —and a loving family— instead of aborting him?). Having complained about Palin’s pro-life views s the Obamists cynically ask if is appropriate for her to accept the Vice Presidency while raising an infant? (Are we saying a woman’s place is in the home??)

She has no foreign policy experience, the liberals cry …Except that she visited Alaskan National Guard troops in Kuwait and was able to visit wounded soldiers in Germany –a feat Obama failed to accomplish. In fact, she has the rare skill of being able to run for president and visit Germany without demanding to make a speech at the Brandenburg Gate.

There is very little mention of how she has lived the kind of typical American life Obama talks so much about but has no experience with personally. Her dad was an elementary schoolteacher and her mom was the school secretary. As point guard of her high school basketball team she helped lead the team to a state championship –while courageously playing through pain thanks to a stress fracture in her leg. She married her high school sweetheart and is still with him 20 years later as a mom of five. She and her husband both earned their livings doing hard physical work. She believes in the Second Amendment: Palin enjoys moose meat stew –especially if she shot the moose herself and most of all if she has spent the day snowmachineing.

She has moral courage that complements her physical stamina. She stands up to big oil and protects the interests of her state’s citizens in the development of Alaskan resources. She insists on clean and ethical government. She won the governorship without the help of the corrupt Republican state establishment, Palin is beholding only to the people, who have given her approval ratings of 80 percent and better.

It was very instructive to watch the Sunday morning news shows. The tone of condescension was overwhelming. Reporters and columnists said that she had appeal –not to college-educated voters, of course, but to blue-collar types who live between the coasts.

New York Times columnist David Brooks told Bob Schieffer that, yes, Palin stood up to big oil; she is a reformer; she took on the Corrupt Bastards Club and beat them…but she hasn’t really done anything! Rudy Giuliani, on “Face the Nation,” corrected Bob Schieffer’s dismissive characterization of her stint as a small town mayor. Palin, Giuliani said, has had to use all the skills of an executive in managing payrolls, making budgets and setting policy. What, he asked, has Obama run? All he has done is make speeches, Giuliani said, answering his own question.

I liked Jesse Jackson’s answer some months ago better. All Obama has run, said Jackson, “is his mouth.”

With Sarah Palin, McCain is attacking Barack Obama on the latter’s home territory by demonstrating he is willing to take bold action to bring change to government. Comparing Obama’s vice presidential pick of Washington insider (and serial plagiarist) Joe Biden to McCain’s choice of a little-known woman with solid reformist credentials argues credibly that McCain is the genuine agent of change…the real maverick.