In picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain took an enormous risk. For no matter how well his team vetted Palin, she remains untried, untested and unvetted by the mainstream media. To the mainstream, Palin was unwelcome surprise. To the mainstream, because she may prove a godsend to McCain, and because she exploits a division in democratic ranks, she is to be destroyed.
One can only imagine the coverage and stories we’d see about a Republican Joe Biden—how he blew up two of his campaigns for President with his own mouth, once by plagiarizing the words of a British hack, the other after referring to Obama as the “first mainstream African-American presidential candidate who is articulate and bright and clean.” Or how Biden was flunked out of a course and nearly kicked out of law school after he was caught plagiarizing.
Why the antipathy of the mainstream toward Palin, the same crowd that often bemoans the glass ceiling? Because it was McCain, not Obama, who grabbed the mantle of change and threw Obama off his game.
In the days since her nomination, Obama has wondered onto the wrong end of the field, arguing that Palin is too inexperienced to be Vice-President. His broadside actually bolsters McCain, since it only sheds more sun on Obama’s light resume.
The leftwing blog and mainstream attacks on Palin’s pregnant teen daughter have served to solidify and bond McCain’s ticket to the conservatives who heretofore had been reluctant soldiers in the cause.
And those pro-life Catholics to which Obama offered an olive branch in Denver? Obama now offers an ad attacking McCain for being pro-life. Obama would have been better off doing a commercial praising Palin’s daughter, her decision to marry and suggesting that African Americans in a similar circumstance follow the example.
Palin exposes the raw divide in the democrat’s gender identity game, exacerbating the hard feelings of the Clinton voters who felt dear Hillary was scorned by Obama. It is a stunt worthy of Bill Clinton, and would be applauded by the mainstream had it not been executed by a Republican.
The risk? The sharks are in the water. Teams of dirt diggers have been dispatched to Alaska and they may yet find something the McCain team did not. And of course, Palin will be held to a far higher standard by the mainstream than good old boy Joe.
