You really can't make this Northern Exposure trailer trash shit up

[Eddie Teach]

There's another option, Marty. He may have just overestimated her.

[Martinus]

There's another option, Marty. He may have just overestimated her.

Then he is a poor judge of character. Either way he looks bad.

[Neil]

There's another option, Marty. He may have just overestimated her.

She's not really that bad.  And either way, McCain was still the superior of the two candidates.

As Spellus points out, McCain was right on virtually every issue.

[Eddie Teach]

She's not really that bad. 

If she can't handle being governor, she can't handle being President.

[DontSayBanana]

If she can't handle being governor, she can't handle being President.

Hell, to hear some tell it, she couldn't even handle being mayor.

[Sheilbh]

She didn't sink all his chances... he had no realistic chance of winning to begin with.  It was a desperate gamble that didn't pay off.  I understand why he picked her.  It's easy to laugh at him now in retrospect, of course.

I think he was the only Republican with a chance to win and I think Sarah Palin killed him.  In terms of polling she was kryptonite to independent voters, and they were key to McCain winning.

[Caliga]

Well, like I said, in retrospect it's easy to say he should not have picked her.  At this point I think he ought to have gone with Pawlenty or Romney.

[DontSayBanana]

I think Romney would have just gone longer before making McCain take a nose-dive.  Fries may have gotten somewhere with Pawlenty, though.

[Berkut]

Well, like I said, in retrospect it's easy to say he should not have picked her.  At this point I think he ought to have gone with Pawlenty or Romney.

Yep. He took a shot, and it was a long shot, but there was no real way for him to know what a failure Palin would be.

Hell, he was running a campaign, it's not like he had 6 weeks to get to know Palin real well or something. He took her at face value, and paid the price. Shrug.

[KRonn]

Well, like I said, in retrospect it's easy to say he should not have picked her.  At this point I think he ought to have gone with Pawlenty or Romney.

Agreed on that. His campaign,in my view, didn't do enough diligence on Palin to get past the flash of what she may have accomplished in Alaska vs what she lacked in political polish, presenting her ideas, or having substantive views on some of the important issues. She was not ready for prime time, and I really don't see her going very far in national politics. She may be a mouthpiece for conservatives in some way but that's about it.

[Caliga]

I'm convinced that she doesn't have any further political ambitions... but it would be disadvantageous for her to come out and say so because people would pay less attention to her.  I'm sure she'd like to be the next Huckabee on Fox--a role for which she'd be pretty well-suited.

[Malthus]

I'm convinced that she doesn't have any further political ambitions... but it would be disadvantageous for her to come out and say so because people would pay less attention to her.  I'm sure she'd like to be the next Huckabee on Fox--a role for which she'd be pretty well-suited.

I suspect she'll milk her notoriety for all it is worth, while keeping an eye out for some shift in political winds that makes her marketable one more as a politician.

[Brazen]

She even made it into Runner's World. The link is US, but she was in the UK paper edition too...

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-410--13221-1-1X2X3X4-5,00.html



Look at the colour of these knees!

[crazy canuck]

Well, like I said, in retrospect it's easy to say he should not have picked her.  At this point I think he ought to have gone with Pawlenty or Romney.

Yep. He took a shot, and it was a long shot, but there was no real way for him to know what a failure Palin would be.

Hell, he was running a campaign, it's not like he had 6 weeks to get to know Palin real well or something. He took her at face value, and paid the price. Shrug.

Agreed.  At the beginning she had good press.  Who knew she could turn out to be the horrible hypothetical of the worst possible pick.

[Sheilbh]

Well, like I said, in retrospect it's easy to say he should not have picked her.  At this point I think he ought to have gone with Pawlenty or Romney.

I think Romney would've been a disaster and I'm hugely unimpressed with Pawlenty, I just don't get the appeal.  My best picks would have been either Huck or Tom Ridge.

Hell, he was running a campaign, it's not like he had 6 weeks to get to know Palin real well or something. He took her at face value, and paid the price. Shrug.

Well, no.  But he had only met her for 15 minutes which suggests a lack of due diligence.  And my understanding is that campaigns have teams that look into people's lives so that they're prepared for when the opposition starts to dig.  It wouldn't have taken long to work out that she wasn't that mavericky and that she hadn't, for example, refused the money for the bridge to nowhere.  I'm not so willing to brush off the worst VP pick since Eagleton and the only VP pick (in my opinion) to have significantly influenced the result of an election since LBJ.

If you look at McCain's approval ratings he was very strong and very popular with independents and they - far more than the left where McCain didn't have such great traction - really disliked Palin.

To be honest I think literally any of the other plausible picks would have been better: Pawlenty, Romney, Huck, Ridge.  I think even had he chosen Lieberman and sent the right into a tizz it would have had less of an impact on the election than Palin.

The reason isn't necessarily because I think Palin was that bad - I'm one of the few people who still think she could have a very successful political career and (worse) I do sort of like her.  But rather I think it's that Palin hit every single one of McCain's strengths and reinforced his weaknesses.  She wasn't as mavericky as everyone thought, she wasn't able to speak to independents (in fact they didn't like her at all) and she damaged his position that experience mattered - though I think that was a mistaken campaign to begin with, when people are angry and the choice is change vs experience then change will win every time, I think McCain was really well placed to run a change campaign but he didn't.  Her youth also reminded everyone of his age, I heard the phrase 'a heartbeat away from the Presidency' a lot after she was picked which McCain didn't need.  I also think the pick did show the potentially negative side of the impulsive, straight-shooting side of his character that was one of his great strengths.

Edit:  I suppose what I mean is that I think even last year Palin could have worked as a VP pick, possibly for someone like Romney whose biggest problem is that he doesn't seem remotely authentic or even human (his dad had a similar problem), but that she was really unsuited to the sort of campaign that McCain was running and to McCain himself.