The Case for Sarah Palin

I’ll admit, as a staunch John McCain supporter and rhetorician, I often find myself somewhat less than enthusiastic when asked to defend the choice of Sarah Palin as Vice President.

I’ll admit, as a staunch John McCain supporter and rhetorician, I often find myself somewhat less than enthusiastic when asked to defend the choice of Sarah Palin as Vice President. Do I agree with her policies? No, not many of them. Am I impressed by foreign policy experience? What foreign policy experience? Am I impressed by her leadership? A bit. Do I enjoy Tina Fey portraying her? Strongly yes. But she does have one legitimate thing going for her that frankly neither candidate on the Democratic ticket can claim, and I’m throwing out gender.

Governor Palin rose from beauty queen to sports reporter to city councilwoman to mayor to governor, landing her governorship in a very impressive fight by beating the incumbent governor in the primary and a former two-term governor in the general election. And now she’s the most popular governor in the country, which is saying a lot when you consider that she’s made many politically unpopular decisions along the way, especially amongst those of her own party. She has done more in her 2 years than any governor before her to clean up Alaska’s government.

Along the way, she made some questionable calls. I do not intend to justify her decision to keep the money from the “bridge to nowhere” (though you would be hard pressed to find a governor who has not pulled that sort of thing). But she has put herself in the position where decision making was not a luxury, but rather a requirement, numerous times, and she did so because she wanted to. She wanted to make decisions. And the positions from where she has had to make decisions have been held solely by her, not jointly with 99 other people. This you cannot say about Barak Obama or Joe Biden.

Taking nothing away from the membership of Barak Obama and Joe Biden to the United States Senate, but they have never led; they have never, as elected officials, been the final stop executive decision maker. In fact, in the case of the top ticket holder, Senator Obama, the man routinely voted “maybe” in his days in the Illinois legislature. Since September 2007, he has missed 80% of Senate votes, no doubt due in part to his campaigning, but that’s the point. It has become clear that since his time in the Illinois legislature, he has either not been present or voted “maybe” on many of the most important and/or divisive issues, including abortion, security, foreign aid, bridge safety, and the AMT, so that he can campaign without a track record that could contradict claims he may make.

His most controversial opinion (at least at the time the decision was being made) was that he did not support the Iraq War. That’s a pretty easy position to take when you have no vote on the matter, because of course he was not in the federal government at the time and did about as much as I did to affect the decision. However, since he has been in the US Senate, he has voted with Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Christopher Dodd on every significant bill pertaining to the Iraq War, perhaps suggesting that, given an actual vote on the matter, he may have voted with them to approve the war too.

For the last 6 days, I have not been able to get a quote out of my head. Some of you reading this have heard me recite it. It’s truly one of my favorites. It popped into my head last Friday when reading a Wall Street Journal article. Here’s the sentence that reminded me of the quote:

“During a morning meeting on Thursday, Sen. Barack Obama called the cellphone of Sen. Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, to take stock of the talks, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Senator Obama was taking more of a hands-off approach, claiming that presidential politics should not taint the process. Someone might have reminded the Senator that he and Senator McCain were not the only people involved and that partisanship was tainting matters plenty already. However, one thing their attendance would accomplish would have been to illuminate their positions on the matter, so I understand why he would want to stay in the background given his history. This train of thought is what reminded me of what Alexandre August Ledru-Rollin, a 19th century French radical, said upon seeing a crowd of people marching through Paris: “There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.” Classic.

And then I watched the debate, and I heard Senator Obama say “John’s right on this” or “I agree with John” in double digit frequency, and I realized something. Senator Obama is only comfortable leading when it is politically expedient. This may strike you as odd considering he wants to be the leader of our country, and I’m struck by that too. As president, you cannot opt out of the role of leadership. But ask yourself this: when has Senator Obama truly stood up, when his name and issue were both on the line at the same time, and he was in a position to influence the outcome, and stated his position unambiguously and voted that way? I’m not sure I can come up with a significant instance. While this is not unheard of behavior from a politician, it is not to be respected.

This is what Governor Palin has going for her. She may have been on a city council, but that’s grassroots. After that, she went straight for the executive role, and sought and achieved other executive positions of greater responsibility, because she wanted to make more important decisions, and she wanted the ultimate power in making those decisions. She does not shy away from taking the lead; she shows up every time, even when it matters most. She is a reliable leader precisely because of these things. You may not agree with what she did when she showed up, but she always showed up, unlike her opponents who ridicule her. You have to respect that.