Below The Beltway

It was one year ago today that Sarah Palin was thrust onto the national stage as John McCain’s choice for his Vice-Presidential running mate. I thought it would be interesting to look back at my initial reactions to the Palin pick.

Even before the pick had been officially announced, I noted that McCain was making a risky choice:

Yes, there are a lot of positive things to say about the prospect that Alaska Governor Sarah Plain may become John McCain’s running mate later today, but there are also negatives that bring risks for the McCain campaign.

For one thing, she’s a relative unknown who has only held the office of Governor of two years. Before that, she was Mayor of the town of Wasilla from 1996 to 2006 after having served on the City Council there for four years. Wasilla, in case you’ve never heard of it, is a town of less than 6,000 people.

That’s not saying that she’s not qualified, but it is saying that she is an unknown with a relative lack of political experience — both compared to the GOP Nominee for President and the Democratic nominee for Vice-President. The last person that fit that bill was a guy named Dan Quayle.

But, I thought it might be a smart choice for McCain:

Initial reaction ? Smart, very smart perhaps, definitely suprising, but also very, very risky.

As more came out about Palin on that day, though, the questions started to be raised:

Just as Obama needed to pick a candidate to help with gaps in his experience, McCain needed to pick someone who he could credibly point to and say “this person is qualified to become President of the United States if something happens to me.”

Has he done that with the Palin pick, or has he picked someone that, like Dan Quayle, the public will come to perceive as a lightweight ?

We’d learn later on, of course, that the answer to that last question was a pretty emphatic “yes,” although I noted at the time that I didn’t think that Palin would have that big of an impact on the race:

I think there’s a lot about Palin to like in terms of her admittedly scanty record in Alaska and she’s a better choice than some of the people McCain could have picked, but she’s just the Vice-Presidential candidate and her presence on the ticket does nothing to alleviate my doubts about John McCain,

If anything, she seemed to reinforce those doubts.

Early the next morning, I made a statement that seems somewhat prophetic in retrospect:

[T]hat test is going to come quickly. The Republican Convention starts on Monday. At some point, Plain will be making the rounds of the cable networks and the Sunday morning talk shows (in that regard, perhaps she should be glad that she won’t have to worry about facing down the questioning of Tim Russert) And then, in 33 days she will meet Joe Biden in their one and only debate. After that, the public’s opinion of her will be, for the most part, set in stone.

And boy did that ever happen.

In the immediate aftermath of the Republican Convention, the McCain/Palin ticket did receive a bounce that had it in the lead for a brief period of time, but that evaporated quickly and Palin’s performance in interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson certainly didn’t help the situation. By the time Election Day rolled around, Palin had higher negative ratings in the polls than any Vice-Presidential candidate in recent memory, and those negatives continue to this day.

It’s been quite a year Sarah.