A Second Hand Conjecture

Paul Begala laments the fact that McCain didn’t select a vice presidential candidate who is more traditional, old, boring, uninspiring…in essence, an ossified agent of the establishment, like Joe Biden for instance.

Well, he doesn’t quite phrase it that way, but it’s the political implication of his complaint. Reviewing his catalog of allegedly superior selections, I feel slightly like shouting out as a teenager: boo-ring. Just as a great many Democratic partisans of Mr. Obama did, when surveying a field of establishmentarian dinosaurs in a year of change.

Tom Ridge? Anyone in the GOP getting up early to paste up posters on his behalf? Therein resides the efficacy of Palin as an agent for political engagement, fresh perspective, new directions and reform…key elements in John McCain’s platform reinforced by the decision. Never has the stupefying and ideologically blinded “McSame” charge leveled against John McCain rung more hollow as today. Perhaps Begala’s and broader Democratic exasperation isn’t entirely unexplained by this fact alone.

And yet, as experience goes, have you noticed how effortless it is to compare and contrast the Republican vice presidential nominee with the Democratic presidential nominee? People seem to fall naturally into it. With that in mind, the Republicans should take no lessons in responsible nomination from the Democrats this year.

Yet Begala, blind to the mountain of irony he is climbing, contends that Palin’s inexperience immediately draws McCain’s health into question, because Palin might have to be president in some future year. A fantastic claim, given that it is his proposition that someone of even less experience should be made president in November of this year.

This charge of inexperience is so contextually absurd and malformed in light of the Obama candidacy, it’s almost a baited attack, as Victor Davis Hanson wisely points out in National Review:

In a Zen way it raises the inexperience issue, inviting Obama to critique a fresh VP as “inexperienced” and thereby automatically turn the same scrutiny to his as-thin-or-even-thinner resume for the more important job.
(NRO)

Something of a hook-line-sinker moment, wouldn’t you agree?

Tags: Biden, Democrat, election, establishment, experience, McCain, Obama, Palin, Paul Begala, platform, reform, Republican, Sarah Palin, Tom Ridge, veep, vice president, Victor Davis Hanson, vp

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