The Daily Background

It has becoming increasingly clear over the past couple of days that John McCain’s choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running-mate was more of a last minute headline land grab than a well thought out decision.

McCain started his search for a running-mate three months ago and before he took the stage with Palin on Friday, he had only met her once. Although McCain met with several potential VPs such as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal during his search process, he had not seen Palin since he first met her briefly in February of this year.

In fact, the only time McCain had spoken to Palin about the vice presidential slot was last week over the phone shortly before he offered it to her.

She is a first-term governor, and before that she was a beauty contest contestant and the mayor of a town with a population of less than 10,000, only a fraction of whom appear to have running water provided by their local public works system. Somehow, during her six years as mayor, she managed to run up $20 million in debt for her town.

Some presidential historians have already come out and said that “the most inexperienced person on a major-party ticket in modern history” and that “the fact that he would have to go to somebody who is clearly unqualified to be president makes Obama look like an elder statesman.”

She appears to have zero foreign policy experience and on top of that is said to have only been out of the United States twice: once as a governor visiting Alaska National Guard troops in Germany and Kuwait last year, and before that she had been to Ireland once. A customary part of any Vice President’s job is to serve as the highest level ambassadorial contact that the president can dispatch to foreign countries.

That’s a sharp contrast to her Democratic counterpart Joe Biden, who, as Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, is already on a first name basis with leaders across the world.

(It’s not even clear that Palin has travelled much domestically either. In response to a reporter in Pennsylvania, she said “It’s great to see another part of the country.”)

Indeed, Palin’s experience pales in comparison to Biden’s. When she was a beauty contestant in the Miss Alaska competition, Biden had already been in the Senate for more than a decade and was gearing up to run for president the first time. It comes as no surprise that her home state newspapers are openly questioning her fitness for the job.

Ironically, Karl Rove recently mocked the idea of Barack Obama choosing Tim Kaine as his running mate because the latter has only been a governor for three years. But Palin has only been a governor for less than two.

But perhaps the most damning piece of evidence that Palin is not ready to be Vice President is an admission that came out of her own mouth. She’s said earlier this year that it would be “an impossibility” to be chosen as McCain’s running mate presumably due to her thin resume, and just one month ago, Palin admitted “I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?”

When asked more recently if she is ready to be president if necessary, she replied “Absolutely. Yup, yup.”

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog