McCain-Palin: Disrespect on Parade

Last night, career-challenged Fred Thompson returned to his thespian ways and roared to the assembled right-winging junkies that Alaska governor Sarah Palin has the opposition "in a state of panic," because she's almost too darned good to be true.

No kidding. She's too "courageous," said Fred, and too -- brace here for coming guffaw -- "successful," meaning perfectly qualified as POTUS. No, really, Fred actually said that, in what I guess was a tribute to method acting.

That over-the-top endorsement prompted me to wonder if Fred had just read Richard Cohen's take on the increasingly amusing Palin controversy. No, not the pregnancy thing -- although as religio-political jokes go, that is indeed a good one -- but on that which matters even more: John McCain's still rationally undigestible selection of the Alaska governor to begin with.

Rather than frontally ridicule McCain's choice of running mate, Cohen simply allowed various GOP spokesmen to do it all on their own -- but in the most unintended way. How's that? Merely by quoting their arguments in defense of McCain's v.p. nominee, which demonstrate, as Cohen wryly observed, that "it is possible that this is McCain's attempt to make fools of his fellow Republicans."

And if that was his objective, wrote Cohen, "he has succeeded beyond all expectations."

Take, for instance, what Big Idea-man Newt Gingrich had to say about Ms. Palin on the 'Today' show: "She's the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television…. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she's been in charge of the Alaska National Guard."

So worry begone. As it is for John's connubial mate, Cindy, who either picked up this additional talking-point pile of steaming effluvium from FOX/RNC Newsiness, or FOX picked it up from her, since it has been independently aired by the network as well: "Cindy McCain pointed out -- rightly enough -- that Alaska is across the Bering Strait from Russia and so Palin, by deduction, has been on the front lines of the Cold War … had it not ended in 1989."

Now, one might be analytically torn as to which impresses more -- Palin's National Guard commander in chiefdom or steely geopolitical residence -- but not to worry about that, either. For the master of vice-presidential flunkies, former Quayle-keeper Bill Kristol, entered the fray with some debate-smothering banality. Wrote Cohen: He "use[d] the code word 'traditional' three times in a single sentence [in some network interview or another, I guess] to make his point: 'It's a pretty amazing story of personal success, being at once a traditional woman who broke all of these traditional barriers, kind of the best of both worlds, if you believe in traditional values.'"

Aw shucks, Bill, you know we do. So that's it. We're sold.

But not to be outdone, McCain himself recently told Chris Wallace that he had "watched her record … for many, many years," which, as Cohen noted, is "more years than she's had a record."

Meanwhile, however, all the GOP spokesmen continue to hustle the pushback that Palin is every bit as experienced as Barack Obama -- so there. End of that argument.

What frustrates is not this argument itself -- it is, after all, about all they have to peddle -- but the complete absence, as far as I know, from the airwaves and print of the obvious rejoinder. Which is this:

Hey, pal, it is roughly half the people who collectively "vet" (in the best of theoretical worlds, anyway) the top of the ticket through the crucible of the primaries. It is then all the people who determine in the general if that presidential wannabe indeed has the experience to do the job. There is no constitutional checklist, other than age and citizenship. And that, pal, is the alpha to omega of the experience argument with respect to the top-of-the-ticket nominee. You got a problem with that? Take it up with the founders.

That would seem the perfect complement to the argument that is indeed widely offered up in rebuttal; that vice-presidential candidates are, on the other hand, the sole materialization of one man's judgment. In the final presidential selection process the people are stuck with whomever he chooses. However, it is understandably customary for these presidential finalists to act on the people's behalf and show good judgment -- to choose, that is, a running mate in possession of the vastly proven experience to do the top job, should that become necessary.

Anything less, and especially anything as bottomlessly disrespectful of the electorate as was McCain's choice of the eminently inexperienced Palin, merely shows "consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people," as Cohen framed it -- "a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November."

Well, yes, but that's a whole different issue.