Confessions of a Disillusioned Republican

1) Sarah Palin is entirely, categorically, and grossly unqualified to be the Vice President of the United States.
2) John McCain has done nothing since the primaries to earn my vote and has, due to political necessity and not personal depravity, sold out the very attitudes that once made him respected by nearly all Americans.
3) I will be voting for them anyways.

1) Ever since she was selected as Senator McCain’s running mate back in August, I have sought at every turn to defend Governor Palin’s credentials and qualifications. Indeed, she has proven herself a competent reformer of a broken political system and a courageous maverick – yes, I said maverick – in defeating a corrupted machine. She has also become an expert on energy policy and learned the ins and outs better than most politicians. As the Governor of Alaska, she is talented, and I would likely vote for her re-election when that issue arose.

As a Vice Presidential candidate, though, Palin has been a gross libaility. She is no idiot, but she has proven utterly incapable of communicating with the media. That image issue could be easily overlooked, were it not for her complete lack of other worthy credentials. Palin might, and I mean might, be credentialed enough to be the Secretary of Energy, but her selection as a running mate was a complete lapse in judgment from the candidate of experience and leadership. Yes, she is an everywoman. But the everywoman is not competent to be Vice President. Only the other, the exceptional, the experienced, the educated elite is. McCain wielded that argument quite well against Senator Obama – indeed, he still does even after picking Palin. But trying to make the GOP look like it cares about average folks by picking a completely inexperienced hockey mom was a slap in the face to countless highly-qualified, compassionate individuals like Governors Pawlenty, Jindal, Barbour, and Romney and Senators Hutchison, Martinez, Frist, and Ashcroft. Any one of these men and that other woman would have been highly qualified to serve in the second-highest office in the country, they are all credentialed conservatives, and quite a few of them come from humble roots. Why did McCain feel the need to grab his own inexperienced tabloid celebrity to run alongside him?

Palin undercuts the ticket’s promise of reform as well. Regardless of how much she brought down the Murkowski Regime and was probably justified in ensuring that a violent, distemperate trooper got fired, this casts an unavoidable pall on her reputation as a fighter of corruption. It is unfortunate and, in a state like Alaska, will likely not hurt her career too much. It does, however, show that Palin is willing to break the law to get what she wants, regardless of whether it is right or wrong. Couple this with her agreement with Cheney’s interpretation of the Vice Presidency and she is not ready to honor the dignity of the office.

She is also woefully inadequate on foreign policy and economic expertise. McCain brings more foreign policy expertise than is needed in the job and will likely pick a highly-qualified Secretary of State, but you cannot learn foreign policy in a real and meaningful way from the comfy confines of Wasilla. Sorry, Sarah, but your experience paying bills does not make you an adequate economist, either. Yes, she knows that cutting taxes and spending is a good combination for the economy, especially in recessions, which sets her above Obama. It would be nice, though, to have a candidate somewhere out of the four who can actually talk about how the Fed’s interest rate policies are flawed and why the debasement of currency encourages corporate irresponsibility rather than four people standing up and slamming Wall Street for committing suicide. McCain does not have to be that man, but why couldn’t the party of business find someone who can tell Americans why those liberals over there are going to make matters worse?

McCain couldn’t get Lieberman because someone was smart enough to tell him that it would be a toxic ticket. That was a good sign of restraint on McCain’s part, but what did he think he was doing when he picked this radically unqualified and uninformed pit bull wearing lipstick?

2) McCain has made many more tragic errors than just this big one. McCain started to win the Republican nomination while fighting waterboarding to the teeth, gunning hard for a path to citizenship for immigrants, and running a clean campaign that fit with his record of respect and dignity. Since then, he has sold out. It was for very practical, direct reasons. Had McCain continued to campaign as a moderate on immigration, North Carolina and Georgia could well have gone for Obama due to a downturn in voter turnout on the right. Had McCain gone on the attack against the President on torture and other issues, he could have made more would-be GOP voters in West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia stay home. Had he stayed on the defensive, praising Obama and seeking to forge national consensus, he never would have had a headline other than those attacking Palin.

I do not judge his character for what he has done lately. McCain has sought to win the election. Starting from a point of representing the party that elected President Bush, I cannot blame him for trying to paint Obama something ugly. That said, when Obama airs ads about the economy, housing, war, and energy, retorting by calling Obama a Paris Hilton-terrorist-foreigner sounds ludicrously stupid. This election could have been about the issues. Had McCain taken the time to learn economics inside and out and selected a running mate with a comprehensive understanding of the issues, he could have fought Obama and distanced himself from Bush. Instead, he has embraced Bush’s approach of insults, degradation, and distraction on the campaign trail.

It worked in 2004 against a man incapable of connecting with ordinary Americans or defending his honorable record. It will not work in 2008 against a guy people flock to like a liberal messiah. It looks like what it is at this point: immature politics as usual. John McCain will lose this election and a part of his well-earned reputation as an intellectual deliberator as a result of these desperate campaign gambits.

3) John McCain and Sarah Palin as campaigners deserve neither my vote nor yours, but that cannot ultimately be allowed to distract us from the issues at hand in this election. Will we have a president who promotes market forces to heal our economy or will we look to more unconstitutional and expensive government intervention? Will we look to reform and competition to provide health care and education or will we look for more federal regulation and control? Will we leave Iraq a secure, stable, self-governing nation or will we leave them again? Will we respect the 2nd Amendment or will we give up our collective and individual rights to defense? Will we honor the dignity of the unborn or will we cement-in a judicial branch that values choice over life?

The answers will likely be the second of the two answers for Americans come November. I will cast my vote for the first and await the day when the Bush-era is over and the right can finally get down to business on fixing America. The sooner we can go on the offensive, the better. I am sick and tired of defending people representing my party who do not deserve it and spending the rest of the time writing confessionals like this whenever my conscience smothers the partisan in me.

Consider me officially “disillusioned” and “mild” in my support of this ticket.