 Sarah Palin is a minority, but she is clearly not the one who I thought would be John McCain’s best choice to serve as his VP running mate. 
Anthony L. Hall
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It is now more important than ever for the Republican nominee, John McCain of Arizona, to pick a minority running mate, like Condoleezza Rice, if he wants to have any chance of defeating Obama in November.
Sarah Palin is a minority, but she is clearly not the one who I thought would be John McCain’s best choice to serve as his VP running mate.
Instead, McCain threw a political Hail Mary [yesterday] by choosing this relatively unknown and inexperienced governor from Alaska to assume the challenge of serving a heartbeat away from the president of the United States. As long shots go, however, this was a very shrewd gamble.
After all, Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five, gives the 18 million (predominantly white) women in Hillary Clinton’s “sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits” a new candidate in whom they can vest their political aspirations. And, the far-right conservative values she espouses will help McCain reconcile his differences with the religious zealots who have commandeered the base of the Republican Party.
Not to mention that she is a remarkably articulate and compelling politician who I suspect will prove a surprisingly worthy adversary in debates with Barack Obama’s purportedly more-qualified VP running mate, Joe Biden. And this will be especially evident in debates on one of the most pressing issues in this year’s presidential campaign, namely, energy independence - on which she is extraordinarily well-versed.
As shrewd a choice as she is, however, I do not think Palin will help McCain get elected president of the United States. Not least because McCain has made foreign policy experience the defining principle of his candidacy, but has now made a mockery of that principle by choosing a VP candidate who would probably be hard pressed to find Afghanistan on a map.
Then of course I doubt all those disgruntled Hillary supporters will jump quite so easily from Hillary’s feminist bandwagon onto Palin’s more conservative skirt tails:
No matter the defiance and rage that has Hillary’s supporters (especially middle-aged white women) now vowing to vote for McCain instead of Obama, I have no doubt that they will come to their senses on election day and vote for Obama. Moreover, I believe they will do so at the behest of their standard bearer, Hillary Clinton.
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