AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman
What is the key factor behind the GOP selection of Sarah Palin for VP?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Um… Isn’t a candlelight dinner and a walk on the beach about as much as the infatuated Democrats know about their presidential candidate? It is pretty hard for a Democrat to blast Sarah Palin as a VP choice when their own candidate for the higher office is in the same age bracket with the same local-boy-makes-good trajectory into a rookie position in the major leagues. She was on the city council, then mayor, then chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (overseeing all oil and gas production and drilling) before becoming governor of Alaska almost two years ago. Barack Obama was a local civil rights attorney, then a constitutional law professor and part-time state senator before becoming a U.S. senator almost four years ago.
What Sarah Palin does have is more experience than any man on either ticket in one crucial role: being a chief executive. She’s been overseeing a $5.5 billion budget — roughly the same as companies Blockbuster or tech giant Unisys, and larger than Genzyme or A.G. Edwards. (*See correction below). If McCain had picked a two-year CEO of a $5.5 billion company as his running mate, would people scoff?
Well, yes, people probably would. This is politics, after all.
Anyone wanting to ding this as a “tactical choice” and “cynical marriage of convenience,” is decades too late. Every vice presidential candidate in modern history has been a tactical choice.
My research assistant, Tally Whitehead, was a delegate at the Republican National Convention, and as politico Mary Matalin told the crowd at a Sept. 1 luncheon, “All this talk about it being a political decision — duh! It is politics! And Biden wasn’t a political decision? Like John Edwards had that much experience!”
The reason Sarah Palin electrified the race isn’t just tactical: it’s because she represents the future for conservatives. She’s a bright, successful leader who is a wife, mother and eloquent leader in the effort to protect American traditional and religious values. I loved it recently when a New York Times editorial described her as “militantly anti-choice.” For those who believe that our most important values - like the preciousness of all human life — are being undermined, that is a badge of honor.
* CORRECTION: An earlier version of the column included incorrect information that overstated the comparative size of Alaska’s budget to Microsoft, Dow Chemical, Dell and Target.
Commentary
By Andrea Cornell Sarvady
“The heart wants what it wants,” director Woody Allen once famously said of his own controversial marriage, and so it is with John McCain. He decided on his vice-presidential “soul mate” Sarah Palin after meeting her just twice — announcing the tactical choice mere days after failing to sell his base on pro-choice pals Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman.
So why did John’s heart suddenly pine for Sarah? Well, it didn’t, of course, but Maverick McCain is as much a slave to market research as any candidate. For the religious far right, she’s Miss Congeniality personified: Anti-choice, even in the case of rape? Check. Creationism in the schools? Check. Abstinence-only education? Check. Against embryonic stem cell research? Check. Add to that millions of Hillary fans so hormone-driven that they’ll vote for anyone with two X chromosomes —- and Sarah Palin’s girl cred is bound to bring McCain the White House, right?
Wrong. The more both men and women learn about Palin, the more they wonder if her vetting process merely involved a candlelight dinner and walk on the beach. McCain partnering with a woman with ties to the secession-obsessed Alaska Independence Party? A candidate with a complete lack of foreign policy experience? Palin didn’t even have a passport until last year. Add to that an ethics investigation for possible abuse of power, and plenty of flip-flopping — she was for Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it; she was for $27 million worth of federal earmarks for her own little town before she was against them for the Alaska she now governs — and you have concerns aplenty.
Finally, with a special needs infant and a teenage daughter whose pregnancy is necessitating an arranged marriage of her own, can Palin really add “lead the free world” to her to-do list? There’s nothing sexist about this question; many of us wondered the same thing when John Edwards continued his candidacy after wife Elizabeth’s cancer prognosis. No, the sexism here lies in the GOP’s belief that women will pick gender over the health of our bodies, our families and our nation.
They cordially invite you to this cynical marriage of convenience on Nov. 4.
Speak now or forever hold your peace.