The Veep Politics

I try not to get too political these days...shocking coming from someone that used to be quite active in campus political issues and ran a political website for a couple of years. I think I've found as a Catholic that no politician is ever going to "get it right" and I'd rather focus my attention on ministering to people and helping them on a personal rather than legislative basis.

That being said, I have some reflections on the Presidential circus going on right now. In case you haven't heard the news, we now have the official tickets for the election this year: Obama, Biden and McCain, Palin. Translated: Naive Idealist and Career Unrealistic Politician vs. Liberal Republican Old Guy and Conservative [Woman] Politician from a little-paid-attention-to State.
Both Obama and McCain's choices make sense, somewhat but I'm not too sure yet if Palin will help McCain.

So Obama doesn't have a lot of experience and when you can get him to be specific about how he plans on bringing about his notion of "Hope" and "Change", the plans are rather naive. It makes sense that Obama gets someone as veep that counters his weakness - hence Biden who has been in politics for years and years (kind of ironic actually as a friend pointed out).

McCain is seen as a leftist by his own party so it would seem to make sense that he would choose someone more conservative than he. Clinton had a lot of support from women that want to see their gender in higher political stature, so the fact that Palin is a woman is a pretty smart move too as she could win over some dems that were Clinton fans. Here's the problem though, if McCain is too left for Republicans, they'd be emotionally reactionary and pretty dumb to vote for Obama who is even further left...so who else but McCain could they vote for??? No one. McCain really has to worry about the moderates and lefty voters since Republicans already are entering the election with a negative bias in general...so picking a conservative is probably not the best way to win over moderates and leftists.

I'm not going to make predictions because Political Science isn't really a science, but I'm just saying that I think Palin was the right pick for McCain today, but not necessarily the one that will help him win in November.

Friday, August 29, 2008