Abstinence Makes the Heart-Throb Flounder

Why on earth did John McCain select this neophyte governor and former very small town mayor with no real experience or knowledge about foreign or national domestic affairs, and no legal, economics, historical, military, or public administration expertise?

Reuters News Service is reporting this afternoon:

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter's pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.
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McCain officials said the news of the daughter's pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called "mud-slinging and lies" circulating on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin's child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.

As we see it, the issue here isn't who got pregnant when, or even who is the mother of whom. It remains, as it always has been, why on earth did John McCain select this neophyte governor and former very small town mayor with no real experience or knowledge about foreign or national domestic affairs, and no legal, economics, historical, military, or public administration expertise?

More specifically, did McCain know what he was doing? Or, did he make a snap decision born of his famously volcanic temperament?

This has all the markings of a rash and impulsive decision, reflective of very poor judgment. As Time Magazine puts it, "On the face of it, McCain has failed the ultimate test that any presidential candidate must face in picking a running mate: selecting someone who is unambiguously qualified to be president."

It's becoming incontrovertible that the McCain campaign did not vet-- indeed, could not have vetted -- Sarah Palin before McCain hastily announced her as his pick. As Jan Crawford Greenburg reported for ABC News the other day, only one week ago did McCain turn, seriously, toward considering anyone other than Joe Lieberman.

As the New York Times is now reporting, right-wing conservatives within his own party and campaign staff vetoed Lieberman last Sunday. McCain telephoned Palin for the first time that same day. Just three days later, he made his decision.

That's barely time enough to fly up to Anchorage and back, much less visit others in the capital city of Juneau or see the City Hall of Wasilla where his nominee supposedly acquired whatever administrative skills she is alleged to possess. It also doesn't allow for any time to do real research into a potential nominee, such as reviewing hometown newspaper archives.

Now, apparently the McCain campaign is racing to make up for lost opportunity. They've dispatched a vetting team to Alaska. Too late, but we suppose better than never.

It's almost a dead certainty that more skeletons are about to come tumbling out of Sarah Palin's closet. So the McCain vetting team will have plenty to do. (And, one may suppose, plenty of original documents to destroy -- unless Alaska's records clerks are more alert than those in Texas and Alabama were some years ago.)

One can feel for Ms. Palin as well as her family. It isn't her fault. But she and hers surely will suffer the consequences of McCain's defective judgment.

What we're feeling for the Palins is true empathy. Just as they may well be undone, even destroyed, by John McCain's ungovernable temperament, so too might be the whole nation -- if he wins the election.

Palin vs. House Plant

UPDATED BELOW

Listening to the hair-dos on Tee-Vee praise John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, one gets the impression they'd be saying the same things if he had chosen a house plant as his running mate.

UPDATED: DEPT. OF AMPLIFICATION

House Plant for Vice President
The case is made for McCain to pick a house plant as his running mate.

A Heart Beat Away from the Nuclear Button

John McCain just tapped Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential pick. Palin is the neophyte governor of scandal-plagued Alaska with 18 months' experience whose longest public service has been to serve as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, when it had a population of 5,470.

What in heck is going on, here? Does John McCain really intend to put this abecedarian's finger on the nuclear button, second only to a 72-year old wannabe president who has had four melanomas and three plane crashes?

By her own admission just a month ago, Palin can't even answer "what is it exactly that the VP does every day?"

Little ol' Pensacola's John Fogg has far more experience, for goodness' sake. Heck, the mayor of Milton, Florida (pop. 7,045) carries heavier public responsibilities. And we wouldn't want either of them running the world's only superpower, would we?

This is a blunder of epic proportions. Epic. Worse than Quayle. Worse than Admiral James ("Who am I? What am I doing here?") Stockdale.

And, we hear there is a lot more negative stuff about to come out, from her extremist libertarian theology to her disagreement with McCain over arctic drilling, to her past medical records and her wacko creationist views. Palin is going to make the unfortunate Thomas Eagleton look like a sane choice, by comparison.

Meanwhile, the Tee-Vee hair-dos -- we kid you not -- are complimenting McCain on how deftly he maneuvered them into not reporting much this morning about Barack Obama's remarkable acceptance speech last night. "Stop us before we get snookered again," they seem to be saying.

Yeah, right.

McCain's Gustav Excuse

So compelling was Barack Obama's acceptance speech last night (and so terrible a public speaker is John McCain) that the Republicans actually are thinking of postponing their Twin Cities convention next week.

But, oh please! They're trying to blame it on Gustav.

Normally, postponing travel and hotel reservations for several thousand convention-goers in a city booked to the max with other events would be a non-starter. But this year a lot of prominent GOP politicians, from Dick Cheney to criminal defendant/Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, already have declared they don't want to be seen at their party's party.

Simply google "won't attend GOP convention" and you'll get 179,000+ hits. Republican politicians up for reelection have been running away from their own party, and the Twin Cities, for months. Weather has nothing to do with it.

Here's our guess: The G.O.P. convention will go forward as planned, but Gustav will be used as an excuse to keep Bush away so that McCain can't be depicted umm... ahhh... obscenely hugging him yet again.

McCain's Hole Card

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President"

-- Article II, Section 1, U.S. Constitution

It is doubtless true, as Daniel Tokaji tells the Times, that "a federal court would look for every possible way to avoid deciding the issue" of whether John McCain, having been born in the Canal Zone, really is eligible to serve as president under the U.S. Constitution.

But not for the absurd reason Lawrence Tribe gives, that Congress would never have approved legislation with a "crazy design" that "would create an irrational gap." Congress does that kind of thing rather often, as Prof. Tribe surely knows himself.

No, the real reason is that here you have one of those rare instances where the common law curtain of respectability has been torn completely away and we see revealed behind it the Wizard of Laws for what he really is: "a lawyer who knew a dead governor," in the timeless phrase of one prominent critic of the judiciary.

An honest reading of past statutes and case precedents such as Prof. Gabriel J. Chin has done might well lead to a result that would embarrass nearly everyone in the political world and outrage many who aren't. In such circumstances, it's "To hell with stare decisis and all that legal reasoning mumbo-jumbo. Just skip to the result we want."

Even so, Prof. Chin's meticulous legal research may not go to waste. There's one person on Earth who could be persuaded, with effort, to rely upon it: John McCain himself.

If, as seems more plausible with each passing week, "GOP insiders unhappy with McCain" grow ever more alarmed about his poor campaign style, organization, and finances, McCain could come under intense pressure to step aside by the time the GOP convention opens on September 1.

Of course, he'd need a graceful way to exit. Until now, poor health has been the only hole card. And that one leaves an unpleasant odor no matter how much perfumery is used.

Now, Prof. Chin has given new life to another ace up the sleeve: John McCain was born in the Canal Zone and naturalized by statute only after birth. Therefore, the Constitution and case precedents say he cannot take the presidential oath of office. All he'd have to do is click his heels and repeat, "I want to go home, I want to go home."

The major difficulty with all of this, of course, is that before anyone in the G.O.P. tries to strong-arm McCain, they would have to have someone else -- someone who'd make a better Republican candidate -- waiting in the wings. The G.O.P. doesn't seem to have anyone. The Republican primaries already decided that.

Or, did they?

Further Amplification Dept.

The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes
Max Bergman:

During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

But let's unpack McCain's week in a little more detail... [more]