Repartay

In response to my post on Bob Dole’s campaign manager’s endorsement of the Palin pick, commenter “fredshelm” disagrees that Obama can successfully question Palin’s experience.

Lol. Reed is wrong on one thing, the experience argument isn’t going to backfire on women, it’s going to backfire on the whole electorate. Any time the word “experience” is uttered, they are going to look at the two guys at the top of both tickets. Obama has been trying to tell us for over a year that experience doesn’t matter. He undercuts his whole message when he attacks Palin along this route.

Lol, indeed. “Fredshelm” clearly does not understand my argument. The issue is not so much about Palin’s breathtaking lack of experience, it’s about McCain’s judgment in picking someone who so clearly fails his own tests of leadership. The effects are manifest, but largely the result is two-fold.

1. John McCain is on record as saying he would pick the most experienced candidate. Whatever you think of Palin’s experience, suggesting she is the most qualified of those considered with a straight face is like saying Gary Cherone was the most talented of Van Halen’s singers. This has the rather damaging effect of negating John McCain’s message that he truly believes experience is the most important virtue of a president. Indeed, McCain’s camp seems to already be realizing this.
2. The fact that John McCain would pick a potential successor who is so provincial as to fail to form an opinion on the “surge”, while McCain waxes about the “transcendtal” threat of terrorism betrays a shocking lack of judgment, undercutting the other primary theme of McCain’s campaign.

This is all made possible because McCain was boneheaded enough to pick someone with such an obvious lack of experience that her n00bness is actually taken for granted. That is, the facts of her resume necessitate building an argument in favor of her experience, not the other way around. Of course, because it is so readily apparent that she wasn’t picked for her experience, it creates a number of other problems as well, but no need to enumerate those all right now.