THE DAY AFTER

THE DAY AFTER 

Here's the scary part.

Long after her "blame the media" campaign has ended . . . Long after everyone has forgotten her inarticulateness with Katie Couric and her "deer caught in the headlights" look with Charlie Gibson . . . Long after Russia's proximity to Alaska has ceased to be Exhibit A on the list of foreign policy credentials we seek in a chief executive . . . And long after Tiny Fey has stopped making us laugh with her spot on impersonations (some of which involve nothing more than repeating verbatim what was actually said) . . . 

Sarah Palin may have to do the job. 

In fact, in thirty-four days, she may have been voted into the job and two and a half months later, she may actually have it. 

And right now, from everything we know, she can't do it. 

Here's why. 

Ethics 

Governor Palin and Senator McCain have made wild charges that the questions posed to Palin and the manner of press inquiries have violated "journalistic ethics." In the last segment of her interview with Couric, Palin herself noted that she had a college degree in journalism and was surprised by the "ethics" of the profession's current members. McCain has reprised a version of this critique, accusing the media of lobbing "gotcha" questions at her, including Gibson's question on whether she agreed with the Bush doctrine and one oddly enough from a voter inquiring (the second time she was asked this) about her views on whether the US should cross the Pakistani border to attack terrorists without first clearing it with the government of Pakistan. Palin said we should, as has Obama. Because her answer is at odds with McCain's stated position, which appears to be that we shouldn't announce this as a policy beforehand, and McCain's criticism of Obama, who apparently has announced (along with Palin) that this will or should be the policy, Palin's answer means that either McCain and Palin are not on the same page or that Palin is unaware of the McCain position or disagrees with it (the latter of which she denies). 

None of this is "gotcha" journalism nor does any of it cross any ethical line. The Bush Doctrine has been the central organizing principal of this Administration's foreign policy post- 9/11. It holds that the risks are now too great not to act preemptively and that the US reserves the absolute right to do so. Ron Suskind has even written a book about this -- The One Percent Doctrine -- in which he documents its consequences, from the reserved right to a preemptive response in which the imminent threat is defined radically downward relative to current international law and tradition, to Guantanamo and torture. To not know what the doctrine is, to not be able to articulate it, and to not discuss it in a Presidential campaign in 2008 is not just a sign of ignorance. It's a sign of negligence. And it is coming from the second spot on a ticket whose principal stated rational for believing it is better suited to be in the Oval Office is its supposed superior command of the threats we face and the muscular response we must embrace. Someone who wants to be a heartbeat away from being Commander in Chief should be more than conversant on this subject. She (or he) should be eating and breathing it. Not wondering what it means when it is brought up. 

The Palin response on Pakistan highlights another (and greater) deficiency. Granted she was plucked from obscurity with neither the time nor apparently the inclination to learn all the nuances of her boss's views. But she has answered the same question the same way twice, and the second answer came well after McCain had clearly clarified his reason for opposing Obama on this issue, both earlier in the campaign and in their first debate. Was it too much to expect that Palin would be aware of this when the question was again posed to her? McCain excuses her answer because a voter asked the question in a pizza parlor, but if the press can't ask in a sit down interview and a voter can't ask whenever and wherever he gets the chance, and she can't get it right whoever asks, maybe the problem here is that McCain doesn't want questions asked of his Vice Presidential nominee. 

The ethical lapse here is not the media's, or the voters'. It belongs entirely to John McCain and Sarah Palin. Both have decided that attacking the press helps them and will fashion artificial charges of media excess or error whenever they can and regardless of the truth of the charge. There are many problems with this approach, not the least of which is that there is nothing new about it. Bush and Cheney have spent eight years doing the same thing. And the results for America have been universally bad -- no WMD, no "greeted as liberators," no "Mission Accomplished," no permanent success in Afghanistan (in fact a return to status quo ante), and now, not even an economic rescue plan as voters and the Congress treat W and Cheney as the two boys always crying wolf. Put simply, the McCain/Palin/Rove/Bush/Cheney playbook is exceedingly dangerous. 

 One would have hoped that the "Country First" types recognized this. 

 Extremism 

Lost in all the media bashing and SNL humor is the central fact that Palin is entirely out of touch with the vast majority of the country on a host of issues. She has been silent on all this but her record speaks volumes. She is anti-science and anti-choice. She is more pro-gun than Charlton Heston. She believes creationism and intelligent design deserve equal billing along with evolution in our country's classrooms. She thinks the "jury is still out" on global warming. And she thinks either that we can drill our way to energy self sufficiency or that an oil uber alles policy (with perhaps the trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline ten years hence) is the way to go when we think about alternatives. 

If part of what America has to do in facing the serious challenges that lie ahead is bring down the partisan temperature of the last eight years, a woman in the Executive Branch might have been just the ticket. But not this woman (and as an aside, not Hillary either; through no fault of her own, she is to partisanship what gasoline is to fire). Almost on its own, Palin's well documented extremism kills what was perhaps McCain's best claim to the Presidency, his every so often attempts at bipartisanship. It is wrong to vote against McCain merely because of his age. It is not at all wrong to vote against him on the assumption that he may not last and has in the meantime bequeathed a successor whose positions are to the other side of a Cracker Jacks box. 

Incompetence 

Then there is the basic question -- is Sarah Palin qualified to be President? Even a lot of conservatives are now saying the answer is "No." 

True Palin believers salivate at this claim, not knowing whether they should first trot out the rejoinder that those who hold it are inveterate sexists or table that for something more pedestrian, like "Bill Clinton was the Governor of a small state and that seems to have been fine for him." Neither works but that never stops them. 

The charge of incompetence, coming from those who utter it, is entirely gender neutral. I think she seriously lacks command of national issues, substitutes decisiveness and bravado for knowledge, and will therefore not be a competent chief executive of the United States. I thought the same thing about George W. Bush. Sex has nothing to do with it. Had Hillary won the Democratic nomination, the last thing anyone would have questioned is her issue command or knowledge. Had Obama wound his ways through the Democratic primaries exhibiting a Palinesque insouciance on things like the Bush Doctrine, the last thing he'd be doing now is running for President. And by the way, Bill Clinton knew the issues, all of them. He wasn't trumpeting his executive experience in Arkansas as a substitute for knowledge of the federal budget. 

Like I said above, Sarah Palin may get the job for which she is now campaigning. 

Then there is the day after. 

And none of us will be laughing.