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Ok. Ok. Sarah Palin. I just don’t get it. Every time I try to rationalize a reason the VP choice should make sense I just have to stop myself, because my rationalization becomes irrational.
So, I’m in a political bizarro world.
She’s a woman who will attract the disappointed Hillary supporters who were solely concerned with electing a woman. But she’s a far right-wing woman with radically different positions on social and economic issues. Die hard Hillary supporters are disappointed, not ideologically blinded.
She’s a Washington Outsider who will backup McCain’s maverick status. Right. But she’s such a maverick, she is potentially down with the Alaskan secessionist movement crowd (one could say she is married to it).
She’s young and… ready? She’s young with less experience than Obama, who has been criticized for being too inexperienced for the job. A person in the Vice-president slot should be as prepared to take office as the Presidential slot. If McCain believes Obama is too inexperienced, I find it hard to believe he truly believes Palin’s experience has prepared her for office. To me, it looks like McCain has selected an Obama of his own: a young whipersnapper to energize the young people.
And the thing that’s brought me to total realization of my deportation to bizarro world is the Bristol story. The baby’s daddy has now been flown to Minnesota convention with photo ops and a potential stage presentation?!? I understand empathy for the situation of an underage, unwed pregnancy, and kudos for having and keeping the baby. But are we really going to celebrate this?
My mom was 18 when she had my brother and 22 for me. I know it was hard and she had to sacrifice a ton for us. I’m 36 and I’m still not sure I’d be able to handle the things she shielded us from.
Recognizing the situation and the reality is one thing, but we don’t need to be desensitized to it any more than Juno has already done. The grandchild of the Alaskan governor and potential Vice-President of the United States is guaranteed to have everything it could need. This is not necessarily the case for most every other baby in a similar situation. And if the argument is “no one can get a 17-year-old girl to listen.” I guess that might be true, no one except that is for celebrities. Which is exactly what we just made of Bristol and the baby’s daddy.
The best I can do to rationalize the choice is it was a gamble. That McCain sees his chances as slim and he needed to do something to shake it up and hope for a lucky bounce. If this is so, at some point he’ll need to realize he’s going down a bad, bad road. Will he be too stubborn to change direction?
