Sunday, September 07, 2008 Lim: Hail Mary By Melanie T. Lim Wide Awake
IN A master stroke designed to shrink Obama’s meteoric rise on his platform of change, John McCain took the risky road less traveled and named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin his vice-presidential running mate.
At perhaps no other time in history is the clamor for change so compelling for 300 million Americans that it threatens to derail even a maverick and American hero’s platform of readiness. I can understand what led McCain to the desperate path of Palin but desperation is no excuse for poor judgment and especially not for a man running as United States president.
Sarah Palin is a formidable candidate. She is accomplished, intelligent and articulate. Still, it is no secret that Palin was not McCain’s first choice. She is, in fact, McCain’s eleventh-hour choice. And that is what bothers me.
McCain is 72 and has had four bouts of cancer. Even a maverick must have the magnanimity and wisdom to prepare for the macabre business of death and succession. And Sarah Palin, for all of her abilities and accomplishments, is NOT ready for the presidency of the United States.
It’s not because Palin is from Wasilla, Alaska, a town of just ten traffic lights. (And I know because I’ve been there.) It’s not because she’s hardly traveled outside the United States, having secured a passport only last year. It’s not because she’s always run on an ethics platform and yet is now under scrutiny over alleged unethical practices.
It’s not because Palin stretches the truth—-for while she says she protected taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending, as Wasilla mayor, she hired a lobbyist and trooped to Washington annually to demand $27M for a town of less than 6,000 residents. And in the two years she’s been governor, she’s already requested $750M in special federal spending for a state of less than 700,000 people.
And while Palin boasts that she said, “No thanks” for the $398M “Bridge to Nowhere,” she did so only after the plan was nationally ridiculed.
It’s not because while Sarah Palin is riveting as a speaker, she disappoints as a candidate when she twists the truth about her opponents and scares the hell out of environmentalists and civil libertarians with her skepticism over global warming and her dismissal of civil rights.
It’s not any one of these—-but ALL of these facts put together that should make every American pause before thinking of voting for John McCain because voting for John McCain means putting Palin in line for the presidency of the United States.
John McCain’s platform of readiness was decimated the moment he put Sarah Palin on his ticket. By contrast, Obama’s platform of change was fortified the day he put Joe Biden on his ticket.
I saw Joe Biden 22 years ago speaking to TV reporters on the steps of the capitol building in Trenton, New Jersey. Even then, he was already a veteran. A six-term United States senator, Biden has earned the right to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
McCain is ready and willing to serve his country. And he could have been it. But NOT after he pulled this Hail Mary.
