So Bill Burton is spending a day under the bus... although I gather that, down the road, the campaign will be grateful for its "hair-trigger" reaction.
McCain first met Palin in February of 2008, according to an official tick-tock e-mailed to reporters. I've posted it after the jump.
Dan Gerstein, a former adviser to Sen. Joe Lieberman, in the New York Daily News:
"In picking an unknown, untested, half-a-term woman governor from Alaska
to be his running mate, John McCain is following in a long line of
reckless men who have rolled the dice for a beauty queen. Except in
this case, McCain is taking one of the biggest, boldest gambles in
modern American political history."
I cannot overestimate the degree to which Republican political strategists were stunned by the pick.
A few I spoke with or e-mailed were optimistic, using phrases like "brilliant" and "game-changing." One GOP strategist who has worked with Palin says she's coated with Teflon -- "attack at your peril." She "renews McCain's maverick credentials." One person close to Romney said she "looks like a real reformer. She's done what Obama's talked about."
A few are cautiously optimistic that it'll turn out OK, but most of the strategists and consultants I've spoken to, e-mailed with, or read/watched are struggling with it. They expect her to have a good week... and then to crash and burn when she hits the campaign trail as scrutiny catches up with her.
Some of these strategists are close to those Republicans who were vetted but not picked, but many of them aren't. "It's like playing poker blind," one strategist said. Another e-mailed: "Obama's lack of readiness was THE only way to win." When these Republicans ask the McCain campaign for guidance, all they hear back is: "She's more experienced than Obama is."
Conservative activists, almost to the man and woman, LOVE the pick.
BTW: The moose stew stuff and her childrens' names may be geographically and culturally appropriate, but pardon me if I surmise that some folks in the Pennsylvania T aren't going to be entranced. (They would think I was weird too, but I'm not running for VP.)
I get the sense that John McCain' age is now fair game for Democrats. Democrats feel that McCain's Palin pick has given them the green light to use phrases like "a heartbeat away" in their press releases and reactions.
McCain's proximity to death and her proximity to him justify the attention that will be drawn to McCain's age, in this view.
Watch the number of press releases that mention McCain's birthday and/or contain "heartbeat"-type phrases in them.
What The Campaign Giveth With One Hand, The Candidates Take Away
Take two: a much more respectful, classy statement from Chicago, this time in the names of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
"We
send our congratulations to Governor Sarah Palin and her family on her
designation as the republican nominee for Vice President. It is yet
another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics.
While we obviously have differences over how best to lead this country forward
Governor Palin is an admirable person and will add a compelling new voice to
this campaign,
is whether undecided women, weakly partisan Democrats, independent suburban women, women between the ages of 30 and 50, will now take a hard second look at John McCain because of his choice of Sarah Palin.
I think they will. A second look,... doesn't mean they'll vote for him. But he's earned himself a second look. Identity politics works that way.
The Obama campaign will try to find a way to connect with these women. McCain's national security argument didn't drive them to Obama, and Obama's "she's not ready" argument won't drive them away from McCain. Equal pay, abortion rights, gay rights, Palin's reputed temper, the environment... there's a grab bag of issues to choose from, but they need an argument, not an issue.
Wolfson: Palin Pick Makes One Wonder Why Obama Didn't Pick HRC
The former Clinton communications director writes: "...you are going to have a lot of women voters wondering why Senator Obama didn't tap Senator Clinton as his running mate."
She is a very effective stump speaker, spunky and upbeat, and her first try at a persuasive argument on John McCain's behalf succeeded. She looks and sounds very different than he does. That's a plus. On the other hand, she talked about change, not experience. And we live, as John McCain reminds us, in a time of war.
Read the McCain and Palin speeches after the jump.
Obama Campaign Reactions: Inexperience A "Heartbeat Away"
From Obama spokesman Bill Burton:
"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with
zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the
agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies --
that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same," said Bill
Burton, Obama Campaign Spokesman.
U.S. Senator John McCain
today announced that he has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his
running mate and to serve as his vice president.
Governor
Palin is a tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that
she is ready to be president. She has brought Republicans and Democrats
together within her Administration and has a record of delivering on the change
and reform that we need in Washington.
Governor
Palin has challenged the influence of the big oil companies while fighting for
the development of new energy resources. She leads a state that matters to
every one of us -- Alaska has significant
energy resources and she has been a leader in the fight to make America energy
independent.
In Alaska, Governor Palin
challenged a corrupt system and passed a landmark ethics reform bill. She has
actually used her veto and cut budgetary spending. She put a stop to the
"bridge to nowhere" that would have cost taxpayers $400 million
dollars.
As
the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself,
Governor Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands
the importance of supporting our troops.
Governor
Palin has the record of reform and bipartisanship that others can only speak
of. Her experience in shaking up the status quo is exactly what is needed in Washington today.
Republicans in Congress this June united to defeat a proposed
windfall tax on oil companies, deriding it as a bad idea that would
discourage investment in U.S. oil exploration.
Things worked out far differently in the GOP stronghold of Alaska, a
state whose economic fate is closely tied to the oil industry.
Over the opposition of oil companies, Republican Gov. Sarah Palin
and Alaska's Legislature last year approved a major increase in taxes
on the oil industry -- a step that has generated stunning new wealth for
the state as oil prices soared.
Talk about McCain the fighter pilot... McCain, whose hero is Teddy Roosevelt
The cable press is talking about the VP choice, not Obama's piece.
She's charismatic.
The potential appeal for women. (Although, in 1984 Reagan won 54% of the vote in Ferraro on the ticket. Identity voting has no history on the presidential race.)
She has some reformist creds, taking on her own party...
She's blunt and outspoken.
Joe Biden might want to modulate his tone against a woman.
Her husband works with his hands and races in snow.
Rush Limbaugh likes her.
She's not from Washington.
Con:
After spending six months trying to discredit Barack Obama's readiness to be commander in chief, McCain has chosen someone with even less experience. (She was a mayor of Wasila Alaska, which is smaller than Obama's state senate district.)
Palin has not been exposed to the rigors of national politics
Palin does not know McCain well.
She will be forced to bone up on everything and forced to debate Joe Biden.
The accusations that McCain chose her because she's a woman.
An ongoing ethics investigation (although she was punishing someone accused of domestic violence.)
Disagreements with McCain on some issues, including gay rights. (She opposes same-sex marriage too, though.)
CBS News' Ryan Corsaro reports that Gov. Sarah Palin's parents were told to expect "exciting news" if they listened to their radio in the morning.... link coming soon...
44 years old. .... Five children. .... Dynamic personality. .... Elected in 2006 as a reformer. Opposed Don Young's re-election bid. ..... Anti-same sex marriage but supports other gay rights. .... She's a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association. .... Pro life.. Signed into law a very aggressive ethics reform package. ...... Good
symbolism: she sold the former governor's state jet right after
entering office. She's at the forefront of the oil drilling
debate...very popular among all Alaskans. ......She faces a state probe into whether she tried to get a former brother in law fired from his law enforcement job.. .... Born in Idaho...grew up in Alaska... It would be hard for Sen. Joe Biden to bully her in a debate. ....
She's very unknown (which means that the curiosity quotient will be huge) and has scant national security experience. ... But Obama can't really make that argument, can he? (Maybe third party groups can...)
Here's a rush transcript of what McCain communications chief Jill Hazelbaker told the Early Show's Maggie Rodriguez:
Ms. HAZELBAKER: Well, I know that John McCain is going to make the
choice from his heart. He's going to choose someone who can
be a partner in governing. He's going to choose someone who brings
character and principle to the table and who shares his priorities and I'm
confident that he's going to make a great pick.
Just now, he spoke to CBS affiliate WCCO in Minneapolis and said that he would be picking up his regular schedule today and that it would be safe to assume he wasn't the pick.....
Minnesota
Gov. Tim Pawlenty told WCCO Radio Friday morning that he was not going
to Ohio today. The governor told WCCO Radio's Eric Eskola that he will
be at the Minnesota State Fair Friday, doing his radio show.
Speculation had been rampant that Pawlenty would be named John McCain's
running mate at a rally in Ohio Friday. "I'm not going to be there. I
plan to be at the state fair. You can draw your conclusion from that,"
Pawlenty said.
Thanks to the readers who pointed me to the journey of a sturdy Gulfstream 5 with the tale number of N22GY. Anchorage, Alaska to Hook Municipal Field in Ohio. Nearby Dayton. 30 miles away. And the plane was in Flagstaff, AZ recently.
And where was the plane registered? To an entity called Gypsy Two LLC. It shares an address with a tax exempt organization called the Dean Weidner foundation. Dean Weidner is a Republican donor.. and a guy named William Weidner, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands corp, is a McCain bundler.
Putting aside the speech and its politics, last evening
was very moving for everyone there, myself included. It was a privilege
to have witnessed it The staging was spectacular. Hard to be immune to an experience of an
historical first and the emotions 85,000 peers. I write this because, as I read some
of the news coverage, the tone borders on rapturous, and I wonder if reporters who attended were unduly influenced by the surroundings. It was not the best speech Obama's ever given, but probably his most
urgent; it checked all the boxes, some of which had been empty for a
while. It was a stump speech...but different from his regular stump
speech in structure and even substance. A remarkably non-defensive
speech for a Democratic presidential candidate. He's not going to be
Dukakis or Kerry.... He didn't talk much about his biography. The film and the
week did that. He skipped over almost everything but his Iraq vote. A lot of symbolic talk from Obama and Biden and others about
Obama's life fulfilling America's promise. For all the talk about how
"this" is about "you," it was really about what Obama represents...not
what he's done...but what he represents. If the first three days of the convention were too inwardly focused, too much about HRC v. BHO, the last day was about all Obama v. McCain, with Obama assuming ownership of parts of the Clinton legacy. And the McCain campaign
response was weird, suggesting to me that they really had no idea what
they had just seen. He went after McCain's temperament. Crossed that Rubicon. I do not
think that the McCain campaign anticipated that Obama will do so
frontally. Clearly, the Obama campaign wants to frame the national security
debate as one where judgment is prior to experience, where wisdom is
superior to strength. Importantly, Dems of all stripes seemed to love the speech.
So -- two senior McCain campaign officials confirm that John McCain will appear with his vice presidential pick in Dayton, Ohio tomorrow at noon ET.
And Gov. Mitt Romney expects to be in Dayton, Ohio tomorrow, having been asked there by the McCain campaign, a reliable source close to Romney says. (Another source says Romney will be in Boston.)
Gov. Tim Pawlenty is currently at the governors' mansion in Minneapolis. There is no guidance about his schedule.
We don't know if all the VP hopefuls have been summoned to Dayton; we don't know if some have. (MIke Huckabee won;'t be going.)
It would be weird, wouldn't it, to force the losers in this contest to appear onstage with the winners mere hours after they got the news.....
I'm NOT saying that Romney will be the pick. We may be missing an entirely different side of the story.
South Carolina GOP Brings Up McCain's "Torture" To Rebut Many Homes Charge
It'll run on cable in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which means that it's designed to influence the media (and probably to earn SC GOP chair Katon Dawson some props from RNC members ... he's interested in the RNC chairman's most.) The ad points out that McCain once lived in a box and was tortured.
A Post On Diversions That Chuck Todd Will Appreciate
A reader writes:
Marc - remember back to the 2007 World Series.
It was the final
innings of game 4, with the Red Sox about to close it out. It was at
that moment that Scott Boras, baseball's uber-agent, leaked to Fox that
his client, Alex Rodriguez, had opted out of his mega-contract with the
Yankees.
Red Sox fans were incensed - it tried to compete with our moment of triumph.
If
you think that the McCain campaign - who's been stringing along the MSM
all week long with these video press releases - can resist the
temptation to leak the name Lieberman or Pawlenty or Jindal to Chuck
Todd's Blackberry in the middle of tonight's festivities, you're
deluding yourself.
Last night, after being officially nominated, Obama took the stage in a
surprise piece of political theater that yielded benefits that Obama supporters are now beginning to appreciate. The practical effect was, in this
morning's newspapers (both online and offline) there were impeccable
photos of Barack Obama and Joe Biden beneath a headlines like "Obama
Nominated To Lead Democratic Party."
So this morning, everyone sees the
photos and the headlines and thinks, aw shoot, I missed Obama's speech
last night. And they read the article. And they realize that nope, the
speech is tonight. And they all tune in.
I know Democrats are super eager to see Barack Obama open up a lead over John McCain, but they need to temper their enthusiasm just a bit. Remember, each track includes a three-day sample of interviews, and Wednesday night's festivities haven't even been polled yet, so you can't credit Biden's speech with anything.
Conclude if you'd like that people responded favorably to the convention initially.
But a bounce -- a real bounce -- is not a transient, one-day spike. Check back in mid-September. If Obama has opened up a lead and the lead is steady, then you can fairly say that the convention provided Obama with a boost.
My colleague Mark Blumenthal... actually, more than a colleague..a real polling pro who knows what he's talking about... will, I'm sure, weigh in.
"We're ready no matter who he picks," says Mike Gehrke, the DNC's research chief. "Republicans have a habit of pulling surprises." So: "We've dramatically expanded what the DNC has done previously and tied it in tighter with the message team earlier." 15 different picks were thoroughly vetted by the DNC... Gehrke won't say who. What about an independent Democrat named Lieberman? "No names," he says. To prepare, the team held conference calls with local officials in the potential picks' home cities and states. And a website to heckle the pick has already been set up.
But the DNC and the Obama campaign have special VP boiler rooms ready to go in Denver and Chicago. As soon as the pick is announced, those operations will pounce.
"We're ready no matter who he picks," says Mike Gehrke, the DNC's research chief. "Republicans have a habit of pulling surprises." So: "We've dramatically expanded what the DNC has done previously and tied it in tighter with the message team earlier." 15 different picks were thoroughly vetted by the DNC... Gehrke won't say who. What about an independent Democrat named Lieberman? "No names," he says. To prepare, the team held conference calls with local officials in the potential picks' home cities and states. And a website to heckle the pick has already been set up.
But the DNC and the Obama campaign have special VP boiler rooms ready to go in Denver and Chicago. As soon as the pick is announced, those operations will pounce.
John McCain says he hasn't decided on a running mate just yet. The Republican presidential candidate told a Pittsburgh radio station he wouldn't even talk about which way he is leaning. In
the interview with KDKA NewsRadio on Thursday morning, McCain talked
very highly about one of the people considered a strong possibility to
be his choice, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. He called Ridge a
great American and a dear friend whom he has relied upon for years.
With less than 24 hours to go before the announcement rally in Dayton, Ohio?
That's a stretch....either the New York Times and Mike Allen are completely wrong, or McCain is fibbing.
The way Obama campaign manager David Plouffe tells it, one of the most important national metrics is way underreported. That's the enthusiasm gap between supporters of Barack Obama and supporters of John McCain.
Barack Obama can fill a 75,000 seat stadium.
John McCain, it seems, is having trouble filling a 10,000 seat theater in Dayton. They're giving away free tickets in several states and plan to bus in supporters. The VP announcement can't be overshadowed by a less-than-capacity crowd.
This isn't a McCain-bashing post. McCain's campaign has got to be concerned about the relative level of excitement that the GOP base feels. One way to generate some heat is to turn Barack Obama into a boogeyman. That's had a marginal effect so far. Only McCain can close the gap.
So will his convention next week be about McCain? Or Obama?
A smart reader notes that the press isn't giving much attention to perhaps the key line from Joe Biden. It's part of the advice his mother gave to him when he was bullied.
"Joey, go bloody their nose so that you can walk down the street."
The reader images that some focus group of steel workers in southern
Ohio broke the dials when they heard that line. Expect to hear it and
see it more.
The major goal here was a peaceful, unified process... one that did not
embarrass either Clinton or Obama.
The Clinton campaign and Democratic state chairs really wanted as long a roll
call as possible...to give voters and states their due.
The Obama campaign wanted Clinton
to put Obama over the top. The Clinton
campaign said yes immediately. A necessary benediction and passing of the
torch.
The Illinois to New York yielding was worked out today....
There was no acrimony... just some confusion about precisely what would
happen.
Under a plan approved today by the rules committee of the Republican Party, states would be penalized if they held delegate selection contests before the first Tuesday in March.
That would allow more than a month of campaigning between the privileged early states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
An Ohio member's more ambitious calendar reform plan to institute rotating regional primaries failed by a vote of 39-to-12.
The McCain campaign supported the March window; they opposed the Ohioan's plan.
The RNC will penalize errant states by taking away half of their delegates.
That punishment did not work in 2008, as Florida and Michigan, both rule violators, played decisive roles in winnowing the field of candidates and eventually handing McCain a victory.
** Sen. Hillary Clinton formally released her delegates this afternoon, but she said that she would not tell her supporters how to vote.
** The Obama campaign believes that Rudy Giuliani disqualified Sen. John McCain from serving as president because Giuliani said that "this is not the time to have somebody
with no executive experience as President of the United States."
Plouffe: McCain-Romney Would Be "Greatest Job-Killing Machine" In History
We're getting a transcript of David Plouffe's long interview with the Atlantic Media Company's convention forces, but here's another highlight:
Plouffe had this to say about McCain's vice presidential pick.
"If he does pick Romney, what a duo! It's the greatest job killing machine in the history of American politics. Mitt Romney is an expert on Cayman Island tax shelters. You couldn't have a more out of touch ticket."
"Everyone has to wear Abercrombie and Fitch tomorrow."
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe responding, in jest, to a reporters' question about whether the demographic skew of tomorrow night's Invesco field event will be young.
