In Other News

Proving once again that he is an unpredictable Maverick, only a day after every pundit who cared to pundit it predicted a McCain/Pawlenty ticket, John McCain has announced his VP choice.  Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, hockey mom to five and honest to goodness conservative, has been added to the McCain ticket.  It was a masterful choice, and it surprised me no end.

While liberal and unaffiliated voters may be saying “Palin . . . Who?”, the conservative base of the party, who have been terribly disillusioned with McCain as a nominee, have been talking about her for months.  Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have mentioned her as someone who could solidify the base that McCain often seems to either forget or take for granted.  William Kristol has been salivating about her as a VP choice whenever he has been asked.

The fact that she is a woman (yes, a good looking one) is mere window dressing to her outstanding credentials as a conservative.  She’s pro-life, opposed to gay marriage, and when she took office as Governor of Alaska, she sold the gubernatorial jet on E-bay.

But the strongest point in her favor is her genuine blue collar roots.  While Obama claims to have come from poor stock, he was raised by a globe trotting intellectual mother and her middle class parents.  Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has worked side by side with her husband on a commercial fishing boat, and gone moose hunting with her grandfather.

Finally, her pro-life stance, at least, has been proven to be more than just words.  When pregnant with her fifth child, the child tested positive for Down’s Syndrome.  After being counseled to abort, she and her husband made the decision to keep the baby, whom she brought with her to work.

I don’t think Palin can completely erase conservatives’ unease with some of McCain’s decidedly not conservative stances (McCain-Feingold being among the most heinous) but she has become a large dollop of honey on a formerly “hold your nose and vote” Republican ticket.

How Would I Vote?

DNC ‘08 – What ISN’T There

Pundits will be talking for weeks about what was said and done and written and served at the Democrat National Convention in Denver. But the real story, as far as I see it, is what you don’t see on the podium at the conference. For a campaign that has run on Change and Hope, I see none of either.

Where is the change? What I see is tributes to old insider politicians. Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton stood on the stage, all heavily networked insiders, familiar with the beltway. Where is this difference Obama was supposed to bring? Where is the change from business as usual? Look at the faces on the stage at any given time – how is this Convention different from ‘04, or ‘00, or ‘98? Where is the change?

And where is the hope? In 2004, John Kerry invited a brand new junior Senator from Illinois to deliver the keynote address of his convention. It was a look to the future, a symbol of hope in the future of the party. Four years later, that junior Senator is the party nominee, and where are the bright, rising stars? Nowhere near prime time, that’s a certainty. Where is the hope?

It seems to me that the Democrats aren’t trying to be “progressive,” they’re being regressive. They are trying to replicate Camelot and the Clinton years rather than building a firm platform and marching into the future.

It’s certainly not change I can believe in.