After a day to reflect on Governor Palin, I think one factor overrides most others regarding my impression. She takes the spotlight off the Obama ticket – and this is not necessarily a good thing for McCain. I’ve felt for a while that the reason the Obama campaign stagnated, allowing McCain to catch up, is that the bulk of the media coverage and general attention has been on Obama. The Democrats should have done everything in their power since the end of the primary season to keep the focus on the failures of the George Bush Administration and remind voters that McCain seeks to continue those failed policies. While he’s kept up some pressure on economic issues, we should be hearing of Bush’s failed foreign policies daily, the growing strength and influence of Iran, the folly of trusting Putin, lowering the NATO membership standards for Eastern European countries, proliferation in North Korea, phamtom WMDs in Iraq, trusting a Pakistani dictator with the job of hunting down bin Laden, who seven years after 9/11 remains at large.
Instead, the focus on Obama has allowed McCain abundant opportunity to negatively frame Obama with attacks in stump speeches and campaign advertisements. And it appeard that the Obama campaign realized this too late. But the selection of Governor Palin as McCain’s running mate may be a political mulligan for Obama, a second chance to do what he should have spent the last two months doing — dress down the public image of John McCain. With the Palin announcement stealing the spotlight from Obama just 12 hours after his historic acceptance speech and the GOP convention starting next week, it will be the Republicans who will reside in the spotlight for a while. This is the opportunity for Obama to attack from the sidelines and subvert the experienced, trustworthy – and safe – war hero portrait he has permitted as the character narrative for John McCain.
The anti-Palin sub-plots are already out there for him and the leftist PACs to pick up and run with. While the state trooper/brother-in-law scandal will surely play out sympathetically for many, it’s an opportunity to present her as overly subject to her emotions to the point of corruptly misusing her authority. This should be framed as nothing short of a blatant example of a tendency toward irrational governance that could be disastrous in the White House. The lack of foreign policy experience (and frankly, awareness) should also be hammered; plastering the airwaves with the fact that every indicator of her foreign policy positions that has surfaced so far amounts to two admissions in 2007 that she hasn’t paid much attention to the war in Iraq. The reality of her claim that she “told Congress, ‘thanks but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere is that she was very much for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it.
These sub-plots, with the focus on the McCain/Palin ticket, should all point to and support the new character narrative of John McCain – that the 72 year old Senator has already reneged on his promise of putting country first by making an obvious PR choice for a running mate, as opposed to someone with the experience, perspective and displayed temperament to step into the Presidency of the United States. But Obama must seize the moment.
