The readiness question

Having been out of it for the past day and a half with a reaction to a new medicine I haven't had much energy for doing anything more than cruising around the web and reading reactions to McCain's pick of Governor Palin to be his running mate. Several conservatives from David Frum to Richard Brookhiser to Charles Krauthammer have voiced concern about whether she is really ready to be commander-in-chief. I had several responses to that.

Originally, I rather agreed with their reservations and thought that she would have been a better candidate if she were in her second term as governor rather than just a couple of years into her first term. But I don't know that another four years as governor of any state would have made her more prepared to be commander in chief of a nation at war. Did being governor of Georgia or Arkansas really prepare Carter and Clinton for the foreign policy crises in their presidencies? Democrats would argue that governorship of California and Texas didn't prepare Reagan or Bush either. There is nothing similar to what the president faces every day. Richard Reeves, who has written biographies of Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan, argues in his latest column that no person is prepared for the presidency. He writes that what the president mostly does is react to surprising events that take place around the country and the world. So the public is just taking a "leap of faith" when we place our trust in a new president.

I've always felt that being a governor was a better preparation for being president than being senator. The nation seems to agree given that we've only elected two sitting senators, Harding and Kennedy, up until this year when we will do so again no matter which candidate wins. The skills that a senator has are different from what the chief executive needs. They make deals and talk and go out to fundraise so they can come back and do it for another six years. The Senate is actually designed so that very little gets done since a small minority can block action and nominations. It's a very peculiar place. I just finished Robert Caro's magnificent biography of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate, and what is clear from that is how difficult it has become to get anything accomplished in that body. A senator doesn't have the power that a governor or president does to give an order and take action. Executives can negotiate with business leaders as Palin has done with oil companies or as a president does in conducting foreign policy while senators talk with each other. They might take trips and talk to foreign leaders, but they don't have the authority that would allow them to truly engage in negotiations. Senators oversee their offices while governors and presidents oversee the entire bureaucracy under their control. But with all that governors do, they still don't have the experience dealing with foreign policy that a president faces. No one does. And if it's lack of experience that troubles you, would you rather have it at the top or the bottom of the ticket?

Yes, she was only elected governor in 2006. But for a long time one of the top contenders to be Obama's vice presidential nominee was Tim Kaine, who was elected governor of Virginia in 2005. Did that extra year give him so much more reliability as a potential commander in chief? I doubt that. In fact, conservatives, such as Jim Geraghty, thought the idea of Obama picking Kaine would represent a doubling down on inexperience. Obama, perhaps in response to the events in Georgia, apparently thought the same and went for a man everyone hails as experienced in foreign policy because he has been in the Senate since Nixon's presidency. But if Tim Kaine was qualified to be one of the top contenders, and if John Edwards was qualified after one lackluster term in the Senate to run with John Kerry, the complaints from Democrats that she is unqualified ring hollow.

The Republicans have been enjoying something of a "I'm rubber and you're glue; everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you" defense against the accusations that Palin is too inexperienced to be on the ticket. Because, face it, she has accomplished more in her time as governor of Alaska than Obama has done in his time as a community organizer, state senator, or U.S. senator. She has forced through budget cuts in the state budget, negotiated with major oil companies to get a better deal for her state, taken on the corruption in her own party and defeated it. When has Barack Obama ever taken on his own party? He wants to say that he represents change, but ends up pushing a standard liberal line on the policies he supports. Whether we like mavericks or not, the Republicans have a ticket at both the top and bottom of candidates who have taken on their own parties and been willing to work across the aisle with Democrats to accomplish what they believed was best. Obama comes out of a city and state with a history of stinky politics yet there is no evidence that he has ever taken the brave stances that Sarah Palin did with the corruption within the Republicans in Alaska. He's talked about change; she's accomplished it.

Republicans must just be hoping that Democrats throw them in that brier patch by criticizing her on the readiness question, because if that is a true concern than Democrats are in the position of arguing that Barack Obama is more ready than a sitting governor simply because he's run a successful campaign for his party's nomination. I don't think touting running for election will beat out running a state.

Ross Douhat makes some excellent points about the role of a vice president to put McCain's choice in more of a perspective.

I would add, too, that there's a lot more to running a successful administration than having a President with decades of foreign policy experience. You wouldn't know it from listening to John McCain of late, admittedly, but that's because foreign policy experience is his trump card against Barack Obama, so he's playing it as often as he can. But an effective administration needs to be able to communicate and charm and finesse its way through difficulties, to appease its base and reach out to the middle, to talk fluently about kitchen-table issues and appear in touch with the hopes and fears of the average voter. This is not, to put it mildly, the sort of politics and governance that John McCain excels at. And consider, for a moment, the political landscape that he wakes up to every morning. He's running for the Presidency at a time when the Republican brand is in the toilet, with a party that seems unable to excite its hard-core supporters or woo swing voters, and a leadership - McCain included - that gets the heebie-jeebies when called upon to discuss any topic save terrorism, 9/11 and the Surge. Even if by some Jeremiah Wright-aided miracle he edges out Barack Obama, he'll limp into the White House as a John Major-in-the-making - an aging politician who won an election that belonged by rights to the other party, facing Democratic majorities in both houses, a media that will be primed to treat Senators Obama and Clinton as the default co-Presidents for the next four years, and a conservative base that's just waiting for an opportunity to turn on him. Does this sound like a recipe for a successful Presidency? And if it isn't, wouldn't it be better for McCain, who at present seems like the last candidate of a fading party and a dying generation, to sweep into Washington with a popular, dynamic, female politician as his junior partner, rather than a dull white male like Ridge or a Romney or a Pawlenty? And wouldn't it be better, frankly, for America as well?

As Douhat and many others have pointed out, we'll just have to wait and see how Sarah Palin plays out on the campaign trail. Picking her was a gamble and she could turn out to be a disaster along the lines of McGovern's choice of Eagleton. Comparisons have already been made to Dan Quayle and she's already performed better in her campaign rollout than he did.

John McCain has taken a risky gamble. He's thrown the long ball and now it's up to Governor Palin to prove that she's up to the task of catching it and scoring.