Politico Arena — Palin edition

Editors' Note: Politico has invited more than a hundred notables to participate in a continuing conversation through the campaign and into the transition. Soon Politico Arena will have its own page at Politico.com. In the meantime, starting today, we’ll be publishing their responses to important developments as they come up. First up, they take on McCain's surprise pick as his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), House Minority Whip


Talk about shaking up the Republican landscape. By choosing [Alaska] Gov. [Sarah] Palin, John McCain made a bold choice that generates enthusiasm and excitement going into Minneapolis. Democrats beware — calling her inexperienced only highlights their own nominee's inexperience. And Barack Obama is running for president — Sarah Palin is not. Watching her performance yesterday, she is going to defy all expectations. Groundbreaking decision that only John McCain could make.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), House Majority Leader

This decision shows McCain is desperate. It is a Hail Mary pass that is going to be fumbled. He just destroyed his No. 1 talking point — experience. Voters will not be comfortable with having a small-town mayor with about a year's experience as governor a heartbeat away from the presidency. This choice will, at best, not help the Republican ticket.

Tom C. Korologos, veteran Washington adviser to presidents and former ambassador

My reaction: Mother of five, moose hunter, NRA life member, husband belongs to a union, wears skirts, God-fearing new-generation pro-life woman, 80 percent governor approval rating and most conservative candidate on any ticket since Ronald Reagan. I hope McCain isn't a drag on the ticket.

Tom Daschle, former Democratic Senate leader and an Obama campaign adviser

I agree with those who have called it one of the most risky decisions in American political history. Three questions: With absolutely no experience, are we ready, if necessary, to place our future in her hands as commander in chief and our premier negotiator with other world leaders? Are we comfortable in having a VP who represents the extreme right wing, including the advocacy of creationism and a denial of any human responsibility in climate change? What happens if Gov. Palin is found to have abused her office in the firing of a police officer?

Stephen Hess, senior fellow emeritus in governance studies at The Brookings Institution

The question has been whether Obama is experienced enough to be president. Experience, one gains with time. Palin also lacks experience. But what we must now try to learn about her is whether she is qualified to be president. There’s a lot we need to know. Her temperament is worth examining.

Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary

A recurring theme at the Democratic convention was: John McCain is well-intentioned but out of touch. There is no better example than his VP pick. John McCain knows he needs to appeal to women to win this election. Picking a woman as your VP seems logical toward that end, logical until you look at her record.

Palin is pro-life, most assuredly a principled position but at odds with a large majority of women in America. Her views that there should be no restrictions on assault weapons and cop killer bullets is an anathema to most women in America.

Finally, experience. 2004 showed us that women would vote for the candidate they thought could protect this country in a time of crisis. Gov. Palin may have those qualities, but to think that women would vote for her just because she is a woman and without her demonstrating those abilities is naive. John McCain was right to seek out a woman to expand his appeal. I think the woman he picked, however, showed how out of touch he is.

Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

I am troubled by it, not the least because of the way it was done — last minute, impulsive, with the presidential candidate barely knowing his choice and without an extensive vetting done well in advance. The ethical issue is also troublesome, just from what we know on the record. Gov. Palin is by all accounts honest when it comes to money and taxpayer dollars, but either she or her close subordinates used government power to try to settle a personal vendetta — if she did not do it, but her subordinate did (from the audio tape on record), she clearly should have fired him and did not. Given the Patriot Act, the enhanced surveillance and other powers being exercised by the federal government, having someone willing to use or tolerate the use of the power of the state for personal vengeance is pretty unsettling.

Ron Bonjean, top strategist for Senate and House Republicans

The brilliant choice of Gov. Palin is that is has energized the conservative base while appealing to independents, working moms, disaffected Hillary voters and those who want change brought to Washington. It was smart, outside-the-box thinking to shake up the Obama momentum and has turned the media upside down on news coverage.

Sen. Obama's inexperience is actually being amplified through McCain's choice. The more Obama's campaign and its surrogates attack Gov. Palin on her positive track record, the more damage they do to Obama's brand. Their attacks have a boomerang effect because it allows McCain's team to remind voters that Obama doesn't have strong leadership credentials.

Gov. Palin's challenge will be to perform flawlessly over the next 60 days, because any mistake or misfire can quickly shape her image among voters who are still absorbing this choice.

Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution

I am a registered independent and have not decided for whom I will vote in this election.

McCain's selection of Sarah Palin was a brilliant stroke. In a close race — as it has been until now — it would have been far safer to choose one of the obvious contenders. Instead he defied the conventional wisdom and picked someone that almost no one had thought of.

McCain recognizes, it seems, that we live in a media-saturated culture, where appearances count for more than substance. Perhaps Palin has the substance too, but on first look she sure wins on the appearance scale. She is beautiful, radiates warmth and sincerity, and seems self-assured but not arrogant. Her family picture — a successful mother with five children (one with Down syndrome), a happy wife, an accomplished athlete and a cheerful demeanor — is almost too good to be true. Her political persona as corruption-buster plays well, too.

Independents may be turned off by her social conservatism, or they may be wowed by McCain's show of independence from the party elders. With her choice, he has demonstrated that he is still the maverick that we once knew.

If he wins, the commentariat will look at Palin as the game-changer. If he loses, it will not be because of her, but because 2008 was always slated to be a Democratic year.

Gary Bauer, president of American Values

The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a historic moment for women and for the Republican Party as well as a choice guaranteed to energize values voters. This is a grand slam home run for John McCain. I believe we now have the most pro-life ticket in history running on the most pro-life platform in history. Gov. Palin’s credentials as a leader include taking on political corruption and reducing spending. But her promises of change were not just words; they became actions. And her concern for country has been passed down to her five children. Her oldest son, Track, joined the Army last year on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and is serving his country. All conservatives should be proud to support this historic ticket of proven reformers with records of self-sacrifice for their country and their families.

Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners and a leading Democratic strategist

She is an audacious choice. She clearly shows they are targeting women. Voters, however, will have major questions as they get to know her, about her lack of experience and her support of McCain-Bush economics.

Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School professor serving as an informal adviser to the Obama campaign

It is extremely puzzling that, in 2008, the presumptive Republican nominee has chosen someone who rejects the proposition that human activity has contributed to climate change.

In an interview published on Aug. 29, 2008, Gov. Palin said this: "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made." This was not an isolated statement. At least since 2005, Gov. Palin has said that she is unconvinced that human activity is responsible for global warming.

Reasonable people can differ about many issues relating to climate change, including the timing and extent of emissions reductions. But the scientific evidence of a significant human contribution is overwhelming — as has been recognized not only by specialists all over the world, but also by countless business leaders, Sen. McCain, the Environmental Protection Agency (under President George W. Bush) and President Bush himself (who used the word "obviously" when asked, in 2005, whether climate change is "man-made)."

Gov. Palin's stunning claim — "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made" — is exceedingly important, not only because it suggests her opinion about one of the leading issues of our time, but also because it offers a more general signal about how she apparently thinks and the circles in which she apparently travels.

Mickey Edwards, former Republican member of Congress now at Princeton University

I’ve been in Minneapolis for the past week, surrounded by Republicans who, though they were supporting the party and McCain, were far from enthusiastic. When Palin's selection was announced, the entire mood of the room I was in changed, and changed visibly and loudly. For the first time, there was real excitement.

It’s too early to know what effect the nomination will have on the nation as a whole, but it has certainly energized Republicans and, in particular, conservatives. Palin brings something important to the ticket. Her vulnerability is her lack of experience, but that's hardly fatal since the Democrats have nominated a candidate whom even other Democrats had criticized for being inexperienced. On the other hand, Palin does enhance McCain’s image as a reformer and trumps Obama’s "Yes, we can" with "Yes, we have." This is a woman who took on the entire state establishment, including the heavyweight powers in her own party, and won enormous public support for doing so.

By choosing Joe Biden (a good choice, by the way), Obama presented the country with a ticket drawn entirely from the Eastern half of the United States. Palin is a Westerner whose values, style and demeanor will play well in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and other states where Obama has been trying to make headway.

Since McCain only has to win the states Bush won, and Obama has to turn some of the previous "red" states, Palin's spot on the ticket presents the Democrats with some obvious problems. We can count on Sarah Palin's travel schedule including a heavy dose of Western and Southern states and making it much more difficult for Obama to bring them into his column.

She brings Romney’s conservative credentials, but without the suspicion that she adopted her positions at the last minute, for political purposes. She brings Pawlenty's credentials but adds a gender card. It’s doubtful that she alone can carry McCain over the finish line — George W. Bush is a heavy weight around McCain’s neck — but it's also doubtful that McCain could have chosen a better No. 2 on the ticket for political purposes. As for being qualified to be president, well, the Democrats have already decided that lack of experience is not a fatal flaw.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.)

A real test of a presidential candidate’s judgment is his choice of a running mate — the person who is next in line to become the commander in chief. As we face serious global challenges and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, John McCain has chosen someone with virtually no national security or foreign policy experience. This choice calls into question both Sen. McCain’s judgment and a McCain administration’s ability to lead a nation in crisis.

To the extent that this choice represents an effort to court supporters of Hillary Clinton's historic candidacy, McCain misjudges the reasons so many voters rallied around her candidacy. It was Sen. Clinton's experience, skill and commitment to change, especially in the areas of health care and energy policy, that drew such strong support. Sarah Palin's opposition to Roe v. Wade and her support of Big Oil will not draw Democrats from the Obama-Biden ticket.

Ken Goldstein, political science professor, University of Wisconsin

With apologies for my lack of nuance — I think John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was phenomenally stupid. It also demonstrated that John McCain really did not believe the race was as close as the polls suggested before the Democratic convention. The fundamental factors of party identification and the nature of the times clearly give the Democrats a great advantage this year. That said, Barack Obama still needs to reach a threshold level of credibility and support from key blocs of voters (independents and weak Democrats).

That is why this campaign is and has been about Barack Obama — the Obama campaign saying quite simply that he is ready to be president and the McCain campaign forcefully arguing that he is not. Picking a vice presidential nominee with such scant experience obviously undercuts McCain's arguments about the importance of experience. As much as McCain likes to talk of being a maverick, his main strength as a presidential candidate this fall was that he was ready to be president — that you could close your eyes and imagine John McCain in the Oval Office.

He was running in essence as the "competent conservative" — one who would not bungle a response to Hurricane Katrina or nominate a Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Put simply, this choice makes it more difficult to attack Obama as not ready for the presidency. And, it shows that McCain did not really believe the GOP base was with him and the polls were really that close.

Vic Fazio, Washington attorney and former Democratic congressman from California

The selection of Sarah Palin is breathtakingly risky and historic in that John McCain has bet his candidacy on a vice presidential nominee almost devoid of any significant public, let alone national security, experience. But as with any big risk, the reward could be great as well.

Depending on how well she performs over the next two months, the McCain campaign can be confident that they have re-energized their base and perhaps improved their chances of carrying the blue-collar vote from Pennsylvania to Missouri, with particular focus on women.

Most pundits assume that once again, the vice presidential nominee will have no impact on the election outcome. That premise will be tested by a potential presidency of the oldest person ever sworn into the office at age 72. The odds are that Palin is more likely to assume the top job than anyone who has preceded her. As a mayor of a town of 8,000 and a governor of a state the size of a congressional district for not even two years, there is little chance that she is ready to serve as president.

She may be a great asset to the ticket, even an effective debate opponent for Joe Biden, but it's entirely possible that the voters will surprise us by deciding that after sober reflection, the risk of putting her in the White House is too great.

David Marin, a principal at the Podesta Group and a Republican congressional strategist

“I’m offended,” says my friend the Hillary supporter. “As if women vote for women because they’re women.”

“I’m ecstatic,” says my friend who (still) hearts Huckabee. “She’s one of us!”

I’m perplexed. Maybe the choice is pure genius. Maybe McCain has energized the base, re-established his maverick credentials, re-emphasized his reform agenda, and added historic new cracks to the odious glass ceiling, all with a single decision. Maybe Palin will amaze us all and be able to stand toe-to-toe with Biden. Maybe she’ll add some much-needed sizzle.

But I thought the McCain campaign was about experience at a time of national crisis. And I thought he understood the outcome will ultimately rest with independents, with “post partisans.” I guess it’s a good thing most people vote for president, not VP, because, right now at least, this has Bentsen-Quayle written all over it.

Dan Schnur, Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California and Republican strategist

John McCain made a trade. He gave away the experience argument in order to have a better shot at those working-class Clinton voters. Palin keeps Republicans from making the case that Obama is too inexperienced to be president, but she can talk to blue-collar socially conservative voters better than either McCain or Obama. I read that Palin drives her family's Jetta to work every day. McCain's campaign should make that Jetta the most famous car in America.

Everyone's talking about how this choice motivates the conservative base. But it also gives McCain more leeway to reach out to the center. Those convention-goers are going to be able to handle Schwarzenegger and Giuliani and Lieberman a lot better knowing that Palin's on the ticket. McCain's best issue at this point — even better than terrorism — is oil drilling. Palin helps him reinforce that message better than just about anyone else in the party.

McCain's campaign has been heading in the right direction over the last several weeks, but it's a very conventional campaign. If he had to choose, McCain would rather be a president than a maverick. But you have to believe he'd like to do both.

Jared Bernstein, director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute and an Obama campaign adviser

Like many other Americans, I know infinitely more about Sarah Palin now than I did last Friday morning. But, alas, not enough to offer much insight into what she’s really about.

Many of her views — anti-choice, pro-creationism, drilling in ANWR — are polar opposite to my own and worrisome to me. It’s not just that I think these views are wrong. It’s also that because we face pressing and urgent challenges in so many key areas — the economy, health care, climate change, war — we simply can’t afford the time to argue about choice and evolution.

Our political time and capital need to be spent on rebuilding competent, pragmatic government, not on ideological arguments. On the other hand, she seems to have a reformer’s streak that’s attractive and needed in high office. Also, I’ve got 8- and 6-year-old daughters who are for the first time paying attention to this stuff. To them, there’s nothing unusual about women to be competing for high office, and that is very satisfying to see.

What’s disturbing about the choice of Palin is what it says about McCain and his team. Many critics, both right and left, have raised the point that this choice isn’t about what’s best for the country, it’s about capturing needed votes and killing Obama’s post-convention bounce. Is there anyone out there who really believes Palin is ready to play backup to a 72-year-old president?

This critique sounds both compelling and a little naive. Presidential candidates always choose their veeps along a “what do they bring to the table?” continuum that has votes at one end and governing prowess on the other. But the fact that McCain went so far to the “votes” end of that continuum evinces a cynical, serious error in judgment. Palin brings youth, gender, and hard right ideology to a ticket that needs much more substantive heft in economics and, should anything happen to the president, foreign policy. In that regard, I can only hope the majority of the electorate finds this choice as scary as I do.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

McCain's selection of Sarah Palin was brilliant, and successfully accomplished one of its primary goals. As was to be expected, the corporate media, far more interested in process than substance, abruptly ended its coverage of Obama's informative and inspiring convention speech, and began its never-ending discussion regarding the political wisdom of McCain's surprise VP choice. For the McCain campaign, deflecting attention away from the real issues was a mission accomplished!

Meanwhile, in the real world of Vermont and America, working families want to know why over the last eight years the middle class has been collapsing while the richest people have seen a huge increase in their wealth, and what can be done to create decent paying jobs for ordinary people.

They want to know why, under Bush, health care costs have soared, why 7 million more Americans have lost their health insurance and why the United States is the only major country on earth not to have universal health care. They want to know why we continue to spend over $10 billion a month on Iraq, while our infrastructure disintegrates, schools are underfunded and millions of young people can't afford a college education. In the final analysis, they want to know if the government of our country is capable of representing anyone who is not a millionaire or the head of a large corporation.

My own guess is that the American people will see through the hypocrisy, irresponsibility and opportunism of McCain's selection of Palin. After attacking Obama for months saying that he doesn't have the experience to be president, McCain, who would be the oldest first-term president in American history and who has had bouts with cancer, selects the least-experienced VP nominee to ever represent a major party.

Barack Obama will win this election because the American people do not want four more years of Bush's disastrous right-wing policies. They want change. Despite the corporate media's coverage of this election as if it were a football game, a soap opera or an Academy Award ceremony, the American people want to move America in a very different direction than Bush-McCain policies have taken us. And, within that context, McCain's selection of Sarah Palin will make little difference.



Steven G. Calabresi, professor of law at Northwestern University and one of many unpaid members of Sen. McCain’s Judicial Advisory Committee

The Sarah Palin pick, like any other pick Senator McCain might have made, comes with pros and cons. Today, I will mention the pros and in a later post I will respond to the cons. First, Gov. Palin appeals to both economic and social conservatives. She thus reunites the winning Reagan coalition bringing many Reagan Democrats back to the fold. Gov. Palin appeals to economic conservatives because she killed the Bridge to Nowhere at the state level after it had received federal funding. And, she has advocated substantial spending and tax restraint exercising the biggest line item veto ever in Alaska history. Gov. Palin appeals to social conservatives because she is a pro-life mother of five children the most recent of whom has Down syndrome.

Gov. Palin will appeal to the voters who used to be called Reagan Democrats because her husband is a union member, she comes from a modest background, rather than from Harvard Law School, and she is manifestly a person who "clings" to guns and religion without a trace of bitterness. She may also appeal to independent and Republican leaning women who would like to finally smash that glass ceiling with 18 million cracks in it.

Second, Gov. Palin knows more about the energy issue than either Sen. Biden or Sen. Obama. Her husband works in the energy extraction business, and she hails from a state with enormous energy reserves which she wants to develop. Gov. Palin got approval for the building of a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 which will do more in the short term to cut our dependence on foreign oil than anything Sen. Biden has done in his 35 years in the Senate.

If you believe, as I do, that energy independence and prices are a key issue this fall, that alone is reason to cheer the selection of Gov. Palin.

Gov. Palin has a proven record of accomplishment. What has Barack Obama ever done that is as important as launching a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48? Gov. Palin ran a city and state while Barack Obama ran a Senate subcommittee that never held any hearings!

Third, there is a consensus in both parties that our politics is broken — that as Sen. Obama has put it, we need to get beyond and transcend the cultural wars of the baby boom generation. Gov. Palin is a fresh face who rose to power in Alaska by opposing the state's pork-barreling Republican establishment of Ted Stevens, Frank Murkowski and Don Young. Gov. Palin is a radical change candidate.

Sen. Biden, however, is the ultimate anti-change candidate. He has served in Washington as a legislator for 35 years and has talked at length but has never actually run anything. Biden is a talker — Palin is a doer. The one thing Biden has famously done is run the confirmation hearings of Judge Robert H. Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas, and those hearings were a national disaster — a disaster that produced the very broken politics that Sen. Obama claimed he wants to fix!

McCain and Obama's vice presidential picks shows that it is the maverick John McCain who is the real agent of change in this election while Obama clings to the inside the Beltway politics of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and now their talkative, long-serving sidekick — Joe Biden.