Published: September 05, 2008 10:34 am         

McCain failed with Palin pick

The ever-present theme of the Republican National Convention this week was “Country First.”

But in the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain put political expediency first ... and country last.

McCain failed in his first important candidate responsibility: to provide the United States with a potential vice president who is prepared to be president.

McCain is 72 years old, with a history of melanoma, a potentially fatal form of skin cancer. That makes his selection of a ridiculously inexperienced Sarah Palin even more dangerous for Americans and for the world.

Everyone, it seemed, interviewed at the gathering in St. Paul hewed relentlessly to the party line that Palin has more “executive experience” than the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden put together.

Nonsense.

If you’re going to use her less-than-two years as governor of a state with only three electoral votes and her being mayor of a community about the size of Norwich as the basis for that argument, then she has more “executive experience” than McCain, too.

Palin is the new darling of the Republican base, and has gotten delirious praise just for being able to deliver a speech written for her to an adoring convention crowd.

The delegates love her because she brings some energy to what was a moribund McCain campaign and she is strongly anti-abortion. But what do we really know about her?

The GOP strategy has been to link questioning her background to sexism _ seriously, does anyone think McCain would have chosen a male with such a slim resume? _ and to attack the news media.

Author Joe Klein of Time magazine, though, has encouraged the press to continue to do its job.

“It is important for the public to know,” Klein wrote, “that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is “a task from God.”

Away from the TV cameras, even Republican stalwarts Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy were caught on tape disparaging McCain’s selection.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Noonan, a former Ronald Reagan speech writer and now a Wall Street Journal columnist, if Palin was the most qualified woman available for McCain to choose.

“The most qualified? No,” said Noonan. “I think they went for this, excuse me, political bull _ about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and that’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.”

Murphy, meanwhile, called McCain’s choice “cynical” and “gimmicky.”

It is now obvious that McCain made an impulsive selection without properly vetting Palin, who has an ethics problem in Alaska, a difficult family situation, extreme views on abortion, abstinence education and an utter lack of any real foreign policy experience.

Palin is the new star of the far right, but McCain did not do the right thing by putting his country last.