Both running mates are inadequate

September 29, 2008 by Kira Bakke 

At first, this article was going to address the current set of presidential candidates, and the disparity between them and their chosen running mates. However, the more research I did on the two potential vice presidents, the more a different disparity began to emerge.

As less-than-perfect as Sen. Joe Biden might be, as incongruous as he might seem next to the far more personable Sen. Barack Obama, there can be no comparison to how dismal Gov. Sarah Palin looks standing next to Sen. John McCain.

In the Sept. 4 issue of The Rebel Yell, David Bell wrote an opinion piece discussing the two presidential candidates, referring to the upcoming vote as “deciding between having a rather large nail hammered into my foot or getting repeatedly shocked by tasers.”

I’m rather inclined to disagree with that sentiment. In my opinion, McCain and Obama are two of the best nominees for president, certainly in my lifetime. McCain’s record of reform and bi-partisan attitude is barely overshadowed by Obama’s belief in personal self-sufficiency and government accountability.

Either would be a valid, responsible choice for the highest office in the country. These men both have their flaws, of course. Chief among these, it seems, are their respective decisions on a potential vice president.

Shortly before the Democratic National Convention, the Obama campaign announced that Biden had been selected as Obama’s running mate. Fresh from a series of obviously unsuccessful and somewhat lackluster presidential bids, Biden has been called the vanilla choice for Obama; the tested, experienced, and altogether bland foil for Obama’s vibrant, if untried ‘Cherries for Change’ flavor. Long labeled a blowhard by the media and fellow members of Congress alike, Biden seems to have a history of making buffoonish points first and thinking later.

He did actually say of his current running mate, “…the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” A dubious sentiment, to say the least.

And then there was the comment regarding Sen. Hillary Clinton, that she “might have been a better pick” for Obama’s running mate.

Not exactly a confidence-builder.

In any normal election, these momentary lapses might be cause for a lost vote. But this year, our battling leaders have thrown numerous wrenches into the generally cut-and-dried campaign cycle. Obama would be our first African-American president. He also ran against a woman who had quite a few followers on the militant end of the support spectrum.

As yet another older white man, McCain and his advisers clearly had a problem on their hands: voting for McCain might be seen as voting against change, against making history. How was he to deal with that?

The answer came in the form of a young governor from Alaska, who had the impeccable conservative credentials needed to attract the Republican base giving McCain so much trouble, as well as the gender to shore up support among women, especially those disaffected Clinton supporters.

The morning following the last night of the Democratic National Convention, the McCain campaign announced Palin as his running mate. After a few golden days of Palin-mania, the media woke up and remembered its political watchdog function, and the Palin family was turned on its head in the flurry to uncover everything it could about the hitherto unknown governor.

Most of it was superficial or generally unimportant: the pregnant daughter, a shadowy firing involving an ex-brother-in-law, the ever-present ‘bridge to nowhere.’

But what really began to emerge about Palin was that she was not ready to be vice president, let alone president, should anything happen to McCain.

In her first major television interview since her selection, Charles Gibson of ABC News asked her if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. After an extremely awkward hesitation, Palin spouted off featureless rhetoric about the need to find terrorists and bring them to justice, and was then rebuked by Gibson, who said he was “caught in a blizzard of words,” without having been given a solid answer.

The Bush doctrine, is generally defined as that of pre-emptive strike. It is, of course, highly debatable as to the exact definition, but most modern political science scholars will agree that the “get them before they get you” doctrine was established by President Bush before and during the initial Iraqi invasion. As information that is distributed to college students, this may be something a potential commander in chief should know.

After the disaster that was Palin’s interview with Gibson, and even a sub-par, pandering encounter with conservative pundit Sean Hannity, the McCain campaign attempted to keep Palin away from any media that might ask her difficult questions regarding the nuances of foreign policy or governing.

That is, until a few days ago when, fresh from meeting with the world’s foreign leaders at the United Nations summit, the McCain campaign agreed to an interview with Katie Couric of CBS, who is generally known not to deliver the hardball questions.

Regardless, Palin once again came up short. She could not name specific examples of when McCain had supported economic deregulation in the Senate, saying after a painful question and ‘answer’ period, “I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.”

She also defended her claim of foreign policy experience based on being able to see Russia from the westernmost point of Alaska by saying that when Russia’s leaders need to visit America, they come through Palin’s state, also seeming to cite military incursions into the pan-Asiatic country from Alaska in order to “make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation,” which is a questionably legal statement from an international perspective.

The fact remains that, our current inordinately powerful vice president not-withstanding, the job is fairly lackluster, a senatorial tie-breaker here, a photo-op there. In all likelihood, both Palin and Biden would mostly do just that.

But there is always that possibility that something might happen to either Obama or McCain. And in that case, moderate buffoonery is generally preferable to incompetence.