Reaction To Palin

I've been on vacation for two weeks, so I haven't had a chance to comment on the choice of Governor Palin for VP. Needless to say, I was shocked and thrilled by the selection, which I learned about over a fantastic ham and cheese club sandwich lunch at the Wellsboro Diner in Wellsboro, PA. I got choked up, and not in the Mama Cass kind of way.

I did point her out previously as a potentially good pick for McCain, though I assumed he would choose someone considerably less acceptable, given his propensity to disappoint.

I will most certainly be voting for the McCain/Palin ticket in November. That was still a question before the selection of Palin, but no longer.

Let me add a caution, however: If McCain is as bad as some of us suspect that he will be vis-a-vis conservatism, I wonder how that will affect Palin's reputation amongst conservatives. Can her reputation survive 4 or 8 years of McCain-style governance? Would the conservative movement be better served if Palin remained the governor of Alaska for another 4-8 years, untainted by any association with McCain and poised to run for President on her own down the road?

Check out this list of past U.S. Vice presidents. It is awfully rare for a vice president to ascend to the presidency. No doubt this is due in large part to the class of mediocrities that have historically occupied the office. But it is also the case that the electorate inevitably tires of a given administration, of which the sitting vice president is a featured member. Arguably, both Nixon in 1960 and Gore in 2000 should have won their respective races, but voter fatigue got the best of these sitting vice presidents.

It is my desire that Palin one day become president. I have to say that serving as vice president under John McCain may not be the best road to the White House.

Sizing up Palin as a personality, her biography, specifically her captaining of her high school basketball team to the state championship, puts me in mind of another basketball standout, former Minnesota Golden Gopher and current Connecticut Sun point guard Lindsay Whalen, recognized as an intense competitor and a winner. These two strong and attractive women are in many ways the ideal for a wide segment of the male population. Call them hearthrobs, if you like...

Here is a somewhat dated article on Whalen. It does give you a good measure of the woman, however.


Lindsay Whalen

Update: Jessica Gavora at the Weekly Standard writes of her time playing high school girls basketball in Alaska and indicates how this experience would have shaped Palin's thinking.