The Palin Pick: Asset or Liability?

Hindsight is certainly 20/20, but in a lot of cases what requires perfect perception is not so much how one sees the outcome but the event transpiring.

John McCain lost the Presidential Election of 2008, as expected. But did he lose it in spite of or due to the biggest curveball of the entire election season? The curveball to which I am referring is Alaskan moose enthusiast Sarah Palin, of course. But the question is whether or not the pitch was a strike in McCain's favor or ball four with the bases loaded that sent Barack Obama to home plate.

I like baseball metaphors. Sue me.

Now, it's obvious that Palin couldn't have helped McCain that much, he did after all suffer a defeat. But looking at where she came from, who she became in the national spotlight, and then what she is today paints a very unique portrait of the Alaskan Baracuda. If not a portrait, a caricature anyway.

One of the reasons for Palin's preliminary potency was the relative obscurity from whence she came. From Wasilla, Alaska to the national spotlight in two years is break-neck speed. Her down-home charm was nothing but appealing. She seemed just like every other soccer mom you see on the weekends, except for her obvious aesthetic values. In lay men's terms, she was a fox, la renard, Babe-raham Lincoln, and a refreshing sight on the rigid arms of McCain.

She shimmered in the limelight. People had never seen anything like it. Among the incoherent ramblings of Romney, Huckabee, and Joe "Who Am I?" Lieberman, Palin came in from left field on a frozen rope. This fresh face was more than unexpected, she was inconceivable. She completely eradicated any semblance of a post-convention bounce that Obama was surely expecting. She dazzled the most casual observers as well as the most invested pundits.

Then the luster faded.

Staunchly conservative, she solidified an overstatedly maverick platform that needed no solidification. For nearly two years, McCain had postured himself to look more conservative than his Senate record indicated. He did so in order to secure the primary nomination that had eluded him in 2000 for that exact reason. But following his subsequent nomination, he kept pace with the new-McCain, who was far more conservative than the old-McCain and the attitude of the rest of the country.

Then came Hollywood. In no way am I advocating for the advancement of Hollywoodian political theories from the likes of Diddy, Lohan, or The View. But when the entire country is dog-piling on you, those are often the most clearly verbalized voices. I've often theorized that the writers at Saturday Night Live must be some of the brightest minds in the country, as it seems they are often the first one's to point out key character flaws in some of our most prominent politicians (see Gerald Ford, George H. W. and George W. Bush...Clinton was too easy). Tina Fey's striking resemblance to and dead-on impression of Sarah Palin revealed a lack of substance that had otherwise been unmentioned up until that point.

It's pretty bad when comedy writers don't have to add anything to one of your interviews and still receive a nation full of laughter.

Her interviews are part of what did her in. She was seen as a viable political candidate until she was skewered by the likes of journalism's playground bully Katie Couric, that bulldog. Speaking of bulldog, those hokey statements about canines wearing cosmetics and hockey mom's and Joe-Alcoholically-Dependent-Six-Pack or whatever that plumber's name was ran wafer thin after about eleven minutes. She was scored well in the swimsuit competition, but in the oral interviews, she fell down and out.

I'm reminded of a colleague's initial thoughts about the candidates' respective Vice-presidential selections. John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and Stephens Media, where I work. He's a great writer with a vocabulary for days, and from what I hear, an above-average tennis player. His Aug. 28 column talked about the strength of Joe Biden juxtaposed against the weaknesses of Barack Obama. One of the most telling passages from this column talks of Obama and Biden's experience:

They say that Biden, a four-decades member of the U.S. Senate, will help Obama by lending experience. That is to say that Obama, in his own right, lacks experience. Biden's selection invokes a contradiction: Obama presumes to offer a new kind of politics, yet his first real decision embraces the very oldest politics. - John Brummett

Good points. Biden seemed the perfect candidate for Obama for all the wrong reasons. In his Aug. 30 column, Brummett then compares McCain's veep choice to others made by victorious Presidential candidates of the past, namely weak choices like Agnew and Quayle. He also compares Obama's choice to pick a "strong" candidate as it pertains to a poor showing by those candidates who had taken that path previously:

History says Democrats ought to worry whenever they find themselves blessed with an able U.S. senator on the ticket and get word of a Republican vice presidential nominee they've never heard of and whose selection seems an affront to responsible governing. - John Brummett

For those of you keeping score at home, that means if a VP candidate is stronger than his running mate, that usually means bad news for the presidential candidate. This seemed to be the case when Brummett wrote these pieces in late August, as Biden seemed to be the clearly stronger running mate of the two.

But the Palin pick flipped that adage on its head. As Palin began to surge the airwaves and internet, she soon became a much bigger name than Joe Biden had ever been, despite his tendency to have a hazardously explosive comment or two. It no longer became Obama-Biden vs. McCain, as it was on track to be, but it became Obama vs. Palin, with McCain being a wallflower in his own Presidential race. Brummett's observant theory was right, but the variables were switched with McCain's pick.

End result: Obama wins. Was she an asset? Well, McCain didn't win. Was she a liability? Probably not, because as I've said before, this election has been the Democrats' to lose since 2005 and I thought they could have put up a much weaker candidate and still won. But a liability? Most would say "You betcha."

So what is she now, other than a former Vice-presidential candidate? Well she's still got her day job, governing Alaska, and many suspect she'll gain necessary executive experience to stay in the national spotlight in the GOP. But she may be forever marred as an inadequate candidate, a highly-publicized banner of defeat that silently clamors "Don't Pick Me."

Only time will tell how she might parlay her new found notoriety; to be famous or infamous, to be viable or dead on arrival.