Borderland

Word of the McCain camp’s hot new prospect for the second slot on the Republican ticket reached Alaska yesterday morning. The most common reaction – regardless of anyone’s political leaning – was amusement. Friday’s Alaska News Nightly radio podcast offers a range of local responses.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the world beat a path to our door, and it’s always interesting when it does. From the gold rush to the pipeline construction, we’ve had our occasional moment in the national spotlight. This is another one for the books.

A lot of people underestimate us because Alaska is so far off the beaten path, but it would be a mistake to write Sarah Palin off as a misstep by McCain, even if it is. We mostly like her – even those of us who disagree with her. For example, Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in the 2006 gubernatorial election, offers a tutorial on her strengths and weaknesses:

Yesterday on the KTVA news they quoted me as saying, “One thing I have learned campaigning against her in 2006, I have a high respect for her and secondly, I’ve learned you never underestimate her.”

While I disagree with Palin on her economic policies, the governor is quite certainly due a tremendous amount of respect for her ability to make people feel she cares for them. In fact this is extremely rare for a Republican politician.

The Obama camp should read Halcro’s blog, since he’s been watching her for a while now. He believes, as do I, that her story has an uncanny resonance with a lot of people, and that doesn’t have anything to do with public policy.

Palin ran as a social conservative, but she hasn’t pushed a social agenda. She ran as a tax cutter, but she put a collar on the oil companies and gained the state a substantial tax revenue increase – our only real source of state income – as crude oil prices went through the roof. Then, with heating fuel and gasoline costs eating us alive (the highest in the nation even though we own the resource – which you’d think would work as direct evidence against drilling more to lower prices!) she lobbied the legislature for a $1200 payout to each of us. This was not exactly a finesse move, and even above objections that it didn’t get us any closer to a sustainable energy policy, it was approved. The result: We all get free heating fuel this year. Not exactly a test of tough leadership or fiscal conservatism, but a popular move, it was indeed.

Dermott Cole, a local news columnist wrote that Palin is unqualified to serve as vice president, even though he has no major beef with anything she’s done as governor so far. Her “chief qualification for being elected governor of Alaska,” he said, “was that she was not Frank Murkowski.” Everyone was pissed at Frank. He appointed his daughter to his senate seat after he vacated it to run for governor, cut a $250 per month “longevity bonus” to senior citizens, bought himself a jet for all sorts of questionable trips, and got real cozy with the oil companies, nearly giving away the store. We were all glad to see him go, and she’s been a welcome breath of fresh air in his wake.

So here’s the main thing I take away from this news. The media players have been saying that Palin’s appointment takes the ‘experience’ criticism off the table for McCain. That was my first reaction, and so it has. But there’s more. Bringing Palin in after using that argument against Obama should make it clear to everyone that even McCain doesn’t believe his own campaign ads – the definition of a bullshitter.

According to today’s local newspaper editorial, “Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation’s when he created the possibility that she might fill it.”

This is a judgment issue. Will Thomas says, “…the argument practically writes itself: “Barack Obama selected one of the most qualified people available for the job of vice-president; John McCain picked one of the least qualified. Who really puts country ahead of politics?”

Politics, in the absence of real accomplishments, is just advertising, manipulating symbols and tapping into people’s passions. Robert Service, who fell in love with the mystique of the Northland understood what it means to pit passion against the test of cold reality:

Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,
Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world.”

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, — Lo, how she makes it plain!
-Robert Service, The Law of the Yukon

Time will tell. People should pay less attention to Palin, who is clearly in over her head, and focus instead on McCain’s reckless lack of judgment. He is, after all, the man behind this little dog and pony show. Frank Rich reminds us of what Obama said in his speech the other night: “We will only begin to confront the magnitude of our choice when and if we stop being distracted by small, let alone utterly fictitious, things.”