Second thoughts on second place

By Dan Streib

Since the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, startling news came from a television network that is a far cry from the mainstream media – the one and only Fox News. Reporter Carl Cameron first revealed several things: that the McCain campaign privately expressed severe doubts about whether Gov. Sarah Palin was fit to be president, that that was the reason she wasn’t allowed to be interviewed by the press very much, that she was very overwhelmed, that she didn’t know the countries in NAFTA and that, as Cameron put it on Shepard Smith’s program, “…she didn’t understand Africa was a continent…” but thought it was a country.

When I first heard this, I was shocked and dismayed. I wondered if the Africa thing could really be true, but I assumed it was. This wasn’t a station that generally attacked Palin with no evidence. With that in mind, my shock turned into frustration. To imagine that someone like that came so close to being vice president (and thus, president) frightened me and caused me to rapidly lose respect for McCain’s judgment. I even made a blog post with the words, “Thank God Obama is our President. I regret the vote I made yesterday. I really do.” After all, I’m a conservative. I voted McCain. But I felt he had been irresponsible and dishonest (he said he thought she was qualified to be president).

I must admit, I now believe I overreacted. A lot. And I take back those remarks. Basically, I had been hearing cutting comments toward Palin from many conservative commentators, and I had went to painstaking lengths to defend Palin against their attacks while in conversation with friends. After all, a couple of bad interviews didn’t mean that she was completely ignorant. However, the post-campaign stories made me realize how misguided I may have been. Thus, their effect on me was stronger than it should have been due to the curse of pride.

However, not only are the accusations against her plausible even as a governor, they might be probable: There’s no way McCain staffers could be protecting themselves by attacking Palin. On the contrary, such attacks make McCain (and the staffers) look even worse for not fully vetting her. These statements wouldn’t have been made unless the McCainiacs were upset and truthful.

And that leads us to another question that I had not previously wished to consider: Regardless of Palin’s knowledge, is it actually true that McCain’s veep selection was an impulsive move guided by campaign strategy? Liberals are probably throwing a fit at the idea that I’m asking a question that they had decided the answer to ages ago. But to be honest, McCain’s track record was indeed of a man who sacrificed politics for country – does anyone not remember that his primary campaign was nearly destroyed by his support for the surge in Iraq? So the thought that McCain might have had his aides research Palin wasn’t really that crazy.

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But it appears he didn’t have them do that, based on the aforementioned frustration of his staffers and their expressed shock at the unpreparedness they perceived in Palin. And this irresponsibility makes the campaign suspension during the initial economic downturn look as bad as many thought it did at the time – it seems like part of a pattern.

If McCain was making such impulsive moves during the race, how confident could our nation be with him as president? However, by not gambling with him and picking a man who lacks foreign policy experience (and any other experience) and who will be unbridled by Congress and the courts, did we possibly jump out of the frying pan and into the fire? Only time will tell.

However, until we know for certain the implications of the Obama choice, I must wish him the best of luck – after all, Obama is our president, and his fate is now that of the country’s. How could one not want him to do well?

Dan is a junior in political science who thinks David and Kenneth were right.