JUSIPER

 
David Frum defects

Posted by Sini

More conservatives abandon ship:

Sarah Palin may well have concealed inner reservoirs of greatness. I hope so! But I'd guess that John McCain does not have a much better sense of who she is, what she believes, and the extent of her abilities than my enthusiastic friends over at the Corner. It's a wild gamble, undertaken by our oldest ever first-time candidate for president in hopes of changing the board of this election campaign. Maybe it will work. But maybe (and at least as likely) it will reinforce a theme that I'd be pounding home if I were the Obama campaign: that it's John McCain for all his white hair who represents the risky choice, while it is Barack Obama who offers cautious, steady, predictable governance.

Here's I fear the worst harm that may be done by this selection. The McCain campaign's slogan is "country first." It's a good slogan, and it aptly describes John McCain, one of the most self-sacrificing, gallant, and honorable men ever to seek the presidency.

But question: If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Still more:

Vice-presidents have historically made surprisingly little difference to the outcome of presidential elections. The elder Bush picked Dan Quayle in 1988 in hopes of wooing younger voters, much as Walter Mondale had chosen Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, in an effort to mobilize women, and George McGovern had hoped that Sargent Shriver would stanch his losses among Catholics in 1972.

None of these gambits worked. Ms. Ferraro did not deliver women, Mr. Quayle did not deliver youth, and Catholics defected to Nixon in 1972.

Where vice-presidents - and especially Republican vice-presidents - make an enormous difference is after the election.

Since the Second World War, 10 men have received the Republican nomination for vice-president. Three of those men - Richard Nixon, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush - continued on to win the presidential nomination for themselves, and two actually became president. (A fourth nominee, Thomas Dewey's 1948 running mate, Earl Warren, rose to arguably even greater power as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. And you could add a fifth case: Gerald Ford went on to the presidency after being appointed vice-president in 1973.) [...]

So this is the future of the Republican party you are looking at: a future in which national security has bumped down the list of priorities behind abortion politics, gender politics, and energy politics. Ms. Palin is a bold pick, and probably a shrewd one. It's not nearly so clear that she is a responsible pick, or a wise one.

2:43 AM |