Why Are These People So Excited?

Why Are These People So Excited?

I think it is remarkable how many people got all excited about the nomination of Sarah Palin to be the Republican Party’s candidate for Vice-President of the United States. On the one hand, some people on the left were apparently so outraged (or panicked) that they launched into all sorts of ridiculous, and sometimes inappropriate, attacks on Governor Palin. On the other hand, the Republican Party’s “base” seems to be all excited about McCain’s reportedly reluctant choice of a running mate. The crowds are bigger and more enthusiastic for McCain-Palin than they ever were for plain old John McCain. Are these people right? Is this a big deal?

First, let me say that I think it’s a good thing that the Republican Party finally put a woman on the national ticket, only 24 years after Geraldine Ferraro found a place on the Democratic ticket. And, I must say, Fritz Mondale’s choice of Representative Ferraro to join him in what was almost certainly a losing campaign could be viewed as an empty gesture. I don’t think it was an empty gesture, however, for a party and a candidate to commit to trying to put a woman a heartbeat away from the presidency, and I don’t think it is an empty gesture this time, either.

On that note, for all those who are disappointed that we’re not seeing a woman at the top of the Democratic ticket, I think the day will come. Some people reacted to Senator Obama’s victory on the Democratic side as if to an apocalyptic event for women in politics. There was a lot of talk about the last chance to have a woman president. I think this may represent, in part, a certain depth of commitment to Senator Clinton, combined with the Baby Boomers’ famous self-centeredness. Yes, it may have been our last chance to see a Baby Boomer woman nominated for the presidency, but there are plenty of younger women out there working there way up the political ladder. Some day, one of them will discover the fire in the belly to make a serious run for the brass ring.

I think that part of the Democrat’s discomfort, to use no stronger word, with the nomination of Sarah Palin has been a direct result of their denial of the nomination to Senator Clinton. Take a little guilt, a sense of having been one-upped, and frustration at having a woman on the ticket from the wrong party, and add to that the very sharp contrasts between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, and you have a recipe for some very agitated Democrats, especially in the feminist camp.

There has been a lot of talk about feminists’ opposition to Palin, attempts to redefine feminism, and whether opposition to Palin is per se sexist. Strip away a lot of the verbiage which is solely intended to promote the chances of one set of candidates over the other, and what I see is that, to members of the established feminist movement (another Baby Boomer phenomenon), Palin may be a woman, but she’s not one of us.

I have often pointed out that there are several kinds of conservative, in the most general kind of categorization. There are those who are of conservative temperament, and then there are those who have a shopping list of “conservative” issues held close to their hearts. (I use the quote marks around “conservative” because the issues on the list change from time to time. Remember when balancing the budget was a conservative shibboleth?) Similarly, there are feminists who would define feminism in terms of support for certain issues, and even for certain lifestyle choices. Governor Palin may be a woman, but she is not on the “feminist” side of many of these issues. She opposes abortion rights. She opposes gay marriage. She doesn’t talk about equal pay for equal work. And so on.

By the way, just as Sarah Palin is a disappointment to many in the feminist movement, so, I think, is Barack Obama something of a letdown for many in the traditional civil rights movement. He has shown that a black man can run for president, can be a serious candidate, can even win a major party nomination, which ought to make the Jesse Jacksons very happy. But he has also shown that the way for a black man to do these things is to focus on issues which are not particularly black issues.

With all of the emotion aroused in the various movements, interest groups, and social groupings by this campaign, it’s no wonder that there has been a lot of “acting out.” But now, let’s get serious about what’s at stake here.

First, what are the consequences of McCain selecting Sarah Palin for his running mate? Well, in the first place, the Republican “base” is, indeed, energized. This can be very good for the campaign, in fund-raising, in door-belling, in staffing all the get-out-the-vote efforts needed for a successful campaign. In some places, the nomination of Governor Palin has certainly nailed down the Christian right vote, the pro-life vote, the anti-gay vote, and the conservative vote generally. Moreover, it may make it harder for the Obama campaign to make headway in some of the “purple” states, like Colorado.

On the other hand, a lot of that conservative vote is in states that McCain was going to carry anyway. Alabama wasn’t going to go for Obama if Mitt Romney had been the Vice Presidential nominee. And California, New York and Illinois aren’t going over into Senator McCain’s column because Sarah Palin is on the Republican ticket. In most places, most of the time, Governor Palin isn’t going to add to Senator McCain’s electoral vote total.

Moreover, in a few states – Washington, for example, and maybe Oregon, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, the Palin selection is going to guarantee that McCain won’t be taking those electoral votes away from the Democratic ticket. Just as the Republicans wanted to run against Hillary Clinton because she energized their base, so the nomination of Sarah Palin has energized a lot of the Democratic base. For one thing, I think that the idea, which, indeed, may never have been a serious purpose of the McCain camp, that the nomination of Sarah Palin would persuade women who supported Hillary Clinton to vote for McCain is seriously misguided. I think that most of the women who were disappointed by Senator Clinton’s defeat will realize that the Obama-Biden ticket is the one that best represents Senator Clinton.

In brief, I don’t think this election is going anywhere because of Sarah Palin that it wasn’t already going to go.

But let’s suppose it does. The major consequence of the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin to be the Vice President of the United States is that she might actually become the Vice President. And then what?

The Constitution of the United States mentions the Vice President only a few times. It mentions that the Vice President is elected along with the President, and for the same term of office. It states that the Vice President can be impeached, using the same procedures as apply to the President. Article II, Section 1 (as amended by the 24th Amendment) explains that the Vice President may assume the office of the President upon the death of the same, or under certain other circumstances. And it has these two paragraphs in Article I, Section 3:

“The vice president of the United States shall be president of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

“The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a president pro tempore, in the absence of the vice president, or when he shall exercise the office of president of the United States.”

In other words, as long as the President is alive and conscious, the Vice President’s sole responsibility is to preside over the Senate. And the president pro tempore can take care of that in the absence of the Vice President. This is a job which is, as I believe John Adams said of it, in actuality nothing, in potential everything.

But isn’t the Vice President a major adviser to the President? Doesn’t the Vice President have a lot of influence in Washington? Dahlia Lithwick points out, in a recent article in Slate, that Dick Cheney and Al Gore were powerful Vice Presidents because of their intimate knowledge of Washington, and their many contacts in Congress and the bureaucracy, not because of the powers of their office. Lyndon Johnson, that great political operator, was frustrated and resentful in the vice presidency, because he was shut out of key decisions. In the first hundred years of the republic, we spent many of them without a Vice President, due to the deaths of Presidents Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, and Garfield, and Vice President King.

I note, in conclusion, that the furor over the Palin nomination seems to have died down, the Obama campaign has wised up, and they no longer mention Governor Palin in their speeches, and Obama is again (narrowly) ahead in the polls. This was a political nine-days’ wonder. It knocked Senator Obama off the front page for a while, and now it has been knocked out of the news in its turn by the financial crisis. And that is as it should be. The nomination of a vice presidential candidate is not, and should not be, critical to the presidential campaigns.

In the end, if elected (which appears doubtful), John McCain could make great use of Sarah Palin to promote various policies, and she, in turn, could use that time and opportunity to make herself into a national political figure. Or he could send her over to the Vice President’s office off the Senate floor, from which she could carry out her Constitutional duties, unremarked, and far from the public eye.