By Dave McNeely | Published Sunday, September 7, 2008
When a football team is losing late in the game, it's not unusual for the quarterback to heave the ball as far as he can and pray that one of his guys catches it.
Because of the prayer involved, this desperation move is known as a Hail Mary pass.
And in the closing weeks of an election, if a candidate is behind, and nothing else seems to be working, the candidate may throw deep - and pray.
Most presidential candidates choose running mates 1) to take over immediately and competently as president if necessary, and 2) to help the candidate get elected president in the first place. Sometimes both are reasons.
The Hail Mary pass in this case was thrown by Republican presidential candidate John McCain in naming Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.
Palin is a bold choice - McCain the gambler has gone "all in," says GOP strategist and pundit William Kristol.
If she flops, he may get buried in November. But if she shines, and McCain wins, he may look brilliant, Kristol says.
The problem is that John McCain is asking to put a heartbeat away from the presidency a woman with less than two years' experience as the governor of a state with a population about the same as Austin.
If he were going to pick a woman, there are several others with more experience - including Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison - that would make many folks more comfortable should McCain be elected, and then something happen. After all, he just celebrated his 72nd birthday.
That said, McCain obviously hopes that since Democratic nominee Barack Obama failed to pick a woman - especially Hillary Rodham Clinton - as his running mate, McCain's choice of Palin will attract disgruntled Hillary supporters.
However, some folks, like Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and oldest child of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, think that is cynical - and appalling.
"I'm still having trouble expressing the depth of my anger about McCain's choice of a running mate," Richards said. "This shameless pandering to women - with a woman who doesn't trust other women to make their own decisions about childbearing - has really got me going."
By choosing Palin, McCain has thrown away perhaps his biggest charge about Obama: not enough national credentials. It will be tough - if not, ludicrous - for McCain to claim Obama is "dangerously inexperienced" after his own VP choice.
Yet some conservative Republicans think it has the capacity to be a brilliant choice. Palin punches several buttons important to the Republican's conservative evangelical base with whom McCain has had an edgy relationship:
- She's not just anti-abortion, but even in cases of rape and incest. (A problem the conservatives have with Hutchison is she thinks the government should stay out of the abortion situation - shouldn't prohibit them and shouldn't fund them.)
- Palin's got five kids and a devoted husband, underlining family values. The youngest Palin child was born with Down's syndrome; the Palins knew about it early enough to end the pregnancy but didn't.
- Also in the family values area, the Palins released a statement Monday saying her unmarried oldest daughter, Bristol, is pregnant.
That's a cluck-clucker for the abstinence birth-control folks, but possibly a plus for the anti-abortion folks, who are glad the girl plans to carry the child to term and marry the father. McCain's camp knew of the pregnancy before they announced Palin's selection.
- Her oldest son enlisted in the Army a year ago and is scheduled for duty in Iraq in September.
- A member of the National Rifle Association, Palin is an avid hunter and fisherperson, and a staunch opponent of any kind of regulation of guns calculated to appeal to "hook and bullet" outdoorsmen and Gun Rights groups.
- She favors drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
- Palin remains unconvinced that human beings have any responsibility for global warming.
- She beat an incumbent Republican governor in the 2006 primary, which gives her some credentials as more reform-oriented than a party hack.
She is a relative unknown nationally. We've seen surprises, like when George Bush unveiled Sen. Dan Quayle as his running mate in 1988, and Democrat Walter Mondale announced he'd picked U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
But Quayle at least had been in Congress for a dozen years. Ferraro, the first woman running mate choice of a major party, had served six years in the House. That said, her choice definitely qualified as a Hail Mary.
But not like this. McCain's pick of Palin is sort of like a Catholic priest saying, "Go long, and give me 10 Hail Marys."
Contact McNeely at dmcneely@austin.rr.com or (512) 458-2963.
