The wacky brilliance behind the Palin pick

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that selecting Palin was a brilliant idea. She is completely immune from personal attack, which means the only real debate in the upcoming election can be about policy.

Criticize her sex, and you lose the women's vote.

Criticize her foreign policy experience (or lack thereof), and you invite painful comparisons to Obama, who wants to be President, not just VP.

Criticize her executive experience, and you invite even more painful comparisons to Obama, the wannabe President.

Criticize her youth, and you again have a problem with Obama, since he, with only three more birthdays than Palin under his belt, is aiming for the executive office.

Criticize her U of Idaho degree and you (a) invite painful comparisons to Biden, no Ivy Leaguer himself; and (b) invite charges of elitism.

Criticize her kind of goofy Alaska accent and lack of European sophistication, and you further alienate the embittered gun owners and religious nuts the elite Obama denigrated a few months ago. (By the way, I'm sarcastically quoting Obama when I refer to those embittered gun owners and religious nuts. His view of them, not mine.)

Criticize her small town roots, same thing: alienate embittered gun owners and religious nuts who make up the heartland.

Try to raise Alaskan political corruption, and you run smack into the fact that she attacked corruption head-on. You also open yourself up to invidious comparisons with Obama (Annenberg and Rezko) and Biden (repeat plagiarism)

Add to this that she's a good speaker, who will make Biden look overbearing and bombastic during debates, and you're just looking at a brilliant choice. She's bullet proof.

I should add, though, that her appeal is to the undecideds among us. I live in liberal land, and was able to hear lots of gleefully negative opinions about Palin today. The personal ones involved smears (and it's amazing how quickly they got around) that probably don't have a lot of truth to them. The first smear was that she abused her office to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. Patrick Casey neatly rebuts that one.

The next smear is that she's a rabid creationist. There is no doubt that she is a creationist, a view that I consider to be in the realm of faith, and unrelated to the science of evolution. As for me, I'm an evolutionist and, if anything, hew to John McCain's view on the subject: "I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also." "The hand of God" -- a rather lovely and poetic phrase for the mysteries that even science cannot answer.

So, she's a creationist, which is a little unnerving to those of us who believe that science and faith don't intermingle well, but is she rabid? Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs, who is himself a rabid evolutionist, and who tangles repeatedly with conservatives on the issue, has examined her position and is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

The actual fact of the matter is that Palin has said that, while she would not push for creationism to end up on the science curriculum, she believes that, if the subject arises in class, it can be discussed, rather than shut down. I agree with that too. Discussion acknowledges the existence of a heartfelt belief amongst many Americans, and allows students to understand that science can only deal with the physical record and the conclusions that can be drawn therefrom, and that it's smarter to leave to God knowledge of his role in that record.

What this means is that the two biggest substantive attacks against her are either false or exaggerated. Giving the full story, of course, won't change the liberal diehards, but should be interesting to for the undecideds among us -- especially since we know that it is they who will determine the outcome of this election.

Another thing I heard from the chattering libs was that "she's not one of us," meaning that Palin lives a lifestyle that is the opposite of that embraced in blue regions: she's pro-Life, she hunts, she actively believes in a traditional God, she doesn't support gay marriage, etc. The beauty of these charges against her, of course, is that they are all substantive. Her presence on the ballot allows a debate on the issues, without getting derailed by personal attacks. When it comes to Palin, no one can say, "Well, you may talk the talk on being pro-Life, Gov. Palin, but what would you do if that test showed your baby was defective?" Her life is an example of the depth of her belief systems.

Finally, when a few people nattered on about her inexperience, I politely pointed out that McCain might have been savvy by putting her on the ballot, because Obama doesn't have any more experience than she does and, quite possibly, less (which earned a nasty remark about small towns and Alaska) -- and that Obama is seeking on-the-job training in the President's spot, not the Vice President's.

The response to that one was "But McCain's an old man," the implication being she Palin's is more likely than not to be the kind of VP who ascends to office via the President's death, rather than a full elecction. "Yes," I agreed, "but he's still unlikely to die within minutes of taking office."

Silence. "

Well, that's why Joe Biden is on the ticket. He has great foreign policy experience." I forebore to point out that he's had the experience, but seems to have learned little from it, since his understanding is limited and his choices are rather consistently bad. I'd rather have a smart neophyte, than a dumb old hand.

Back to my opening point, then: With every passing second, I'm more impressed by the choice, and that's not even covering how impressed I was by the timing of the announcement, which sucked all the air out of that generic, unexciting, vicious Obama speech.