The Senescent Man

In my last post, I had heard a rumbling to the effect that McCain was giving heavy consideration to Kay Hutchison.  Though I didn't have it right, I was on the right track.

Regarding McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for Veep, a number of thoughts and observations:

She is a governor of a state with a lot of geography.

She sold the state plane on eBay because she thought it excessive, again in a state whose size is about a third of the continental US.

She's got spunk and guts, and she's is an overt corruption buster, opposing bigwig rats from her own party - a McCain maverick kind of person.

Though she is in her early forties, she has five kids, one of whom is a Downs child.

She owns a gun and likes to hunt.

She's also a pretty regular person and a "Hockey" mom.

She doesn't use TelePrompTers, yet she is one heck of a speaker.  Obama without a TelePrompTer is toast - wait until the debates with McCain.

No doubt, when Palin debates Biden, he will try to work in the statement that "I know Hillary Clinton.  Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine.  Governor, you're no Hillary Clinton."

Which will be right, because at least Palin has governed, albeit a state with a small population, she has nonetheless faced the kinds of things a president faces on a smaller scale.  Voters prefer governors over US Senators for that reason, and now the McCain-Palin ticket has something built into it that the Obama-Biden ticket does not.

I think this exciting, and it changes the game, and it is exactly the kind of thing that McCain needed, and he timed it exceedingly well.  In fact the McCain operatives were very good at holding the secret until the time they wanted to leak it, about 10:15 AM yesterday, that it drove up the suspense, and it became a media event that nearly eclipsed the Obama drama the evening before.  In and of itself, it said a lot about the cleverness of the McCain team.

Labels: 2008 Election

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 7:19 PM