What Might Have Been
Alex Massie offers this challenge to Palin critics:
Still, a super-qualified running-mate is not much use if they don’t help the ticket win in the first place. And that’s why I ask: what was John McCain supposed to do? The front-running candidates for his Veep would each, I think, have guaranteed his defeat. Mitt Romney? Please! Tim Pawlenty? What a snooze. Joe Lieberman? You have to be kidding. none of these men could have had Sarah Palin’s impact upon the race. None of them would have been a potential game-changer.
There is no question that no other selection, except perhaps choosing Jindal (and probably not even that), could have dominated the news for the last two weeks in the same way, but I’m not sure it’s true that none of them could have had the potential to change the dynamic of the campaign. Choosing either Romney or Liberman would have been a game-changer, all right, but in the way that a forfeit changes a game. While movement leaders and many activists would still have swooned, it seems certain that selecting Romney would have been an electoral catastrophe. Palin provoked so much hostility from the left and from the media because of culture war themes that were magnified by class differences, and despite Romney’s ceaseless effort to make himself into a culture warrior he does not possess the credibility to generate the kind of excitement or fear that Palin does. Romney would have actively alienated evangelicals and working-class Americans just as much as Palin has attracted them. Marginal gains in Michigan would have been offset by demoralization across the rest of the Midwest and the South. McCain’s mockery of Romney as the “candidate of change” would be replayed daily. Obviously, I think Romney would have been politically very foolish. Likewise, had Graham prevailed on McCain and Lieberman became the nominee, the election would already be over.
My guess is that a Pawlenty choice would have been very different. As with any counterfactual scenario, we’ll never know, but given what we do know about the response to Palin here are a few reasons why a Pawlenty choice would have shaken up the race considerably. It is hard to imagine that a more conventional choice making as much of an impact as Palin, but as everyone has acknowledged Palin is an extremely high-risk, high-reward pick and so far we have mostly seen only the reward and not the downside for McCain. Picking Pawlenty would have been less bold, but also far less transparently desperate and indifferent to qualifications. While Pawlenty would have been deemed the safe choice–McCain would have been choosing a longtime loyalist whose chances at receiving the nod had been discussed for months–he would have been almost as unknown nationally as Palin without the problem of being quite so obscure and far removed from the national debate. Despite having been on political junkies’ VP lists for most of the year, most voters would not have known much about him, so he would not bring any more baggage and would bring fewer surprises than Palin.
Unlike Palin, though, he has a longer record as governor of Minnesota than Palin does in Alaska, he has the distinction of being one of a handful of Republican governors of a “blue” state left standing and he narrowly won re-election in one of the worst years for Republican gubernatorial candidates in decades. Considering some of the more superficial attributes, Pawlenty has a working-class background (his father was a Teamster), he is the same age as Obama, and he actually plays hockey, all of which would have added a similar dose of youth, working-class voter appeal and a connection with hockey fans across the Upper Midwest. Like Palin, he was originally Catholic and then converted to evangelical Protestantism, but unlike Palin he grew up in the Catholic Church and so might have had some connection with Midwestern Catholics. A lot of the same identity-driven enthusiasm about Palin could very well have accompanied a Pawlenty nomination, since it is quite clear that what matters to a lot of her enthusiasts is not anything she has done but who she is and what she represents. With the convention in his state capital, Pawlenty’s nomination would have seemed particularly fitting.
As Noam Scheiber noted a few months ago after he wrote a profile of Pawlenty, “Pawlenty is smart and extremely fluent in the details of domestic policy–something McCain can’t come close to claiming, but which will be pretty critical in a campaign waged over health care, infrastructure, and energy.” Compared to a running mate who doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the basic elements of the federal budget and who reinforces the campaign’s obsession with oil drilling, Pawlenty would have been a more capable lieutenant and consequently a more effective attack dog on policy. Rhetorically, he has had a habit of breaking with the GOP without diverging much from fiscal and economic conservatism, but has supported enough “populist” legislation (e.g., increasing the minimum wage) that he cannot be readily reduced to a caricature of a Republican. Electorally, Pawlenty might have helped McCain more in the Upper Midwest. Given how close Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan still are this year, Pawlenty could have helped offset the Democratic advantage of having a nominee from Illinois. Granted, Pawlenty is not a very engaging speaker, which is a problem, but he is clearly far more capable of handling the press and arguing his case on television. Concerning foreign affairs, Pawlenty has led a number of state trade delegations overseas and has visited National Guard units in several countries, so he would not have been as much of a novice in this area as Palin. On immigration, he has a little credibility as an opponent of illegal immigration and supporter of border security, which would have reassured conservatives a little on that score. If the Palin nomination blows up in McCain’s face, as I think it still probably will, a lot of people will look back at the supposedly boring, safe choice of Pawlenty and wonder what might have been. As someone who dreads the prospect of a McCain administration, I’m glad that McCain opted for the riskier choice.
Clarification please. This is the kind of post that makes me sympathetic with the double standard folks. Pawlenty is a little more experienced with foreign affairs. OK. And he’s understands health care and infrastructure better than Palin. That doesn’t sound like he has categorically more experience than she does. And if he doesn’t, given the charisma of Palin, why isn’t Palin the better choice?
I’m happy to be convinced that Pawlenty does have categorically more experience than Palin, but this post didn’t do it. And that conclusion must be established, I think, to make your point.
PS-do you dread the future generally, or do you think a McCain administration would be dreadfully worse than an Obama one? If the latter, I’d be interested in hearing why.
On policy matters generally, Pawlenty is regarded as one of the more persuasive Republicans in the country. It seems to me that he has considerably more personal experience abroad, even if this is limited to trade delegations and visiting National Guard units. He has operated as an effective surrogate for McCain and has handled questions from the national press before, so when it comes to presenting what he knows he is much better at it. He has more relevant experience of being in a governor who has to deal with a legislature not controlled by his party. I would count five years as governor of a more populous, more politically diverse state to be significantly greater executive experience at a high level than one and half years in one of the least-populated states, most Republican states in America. I think his record as governor would compare favorably with hers, but then it would have to given how little time she has been in state government.
I think McCain is more inclined to start wars either with Iran or, God help us, with Russia for terrible reasons, so I am slightly more horrified by the prospect of a McCain Presidency. On all of the relevant policies, Obama does not take positions that are significantly different from McCain, but I do get the impression that he is not quite so gung ho in his support of them. That doesn’t reassure me much, and “he probably won’t start WWIII” is not much of a rallying cry, but Obama does not worry me quite as much–assuming, that is, that his crazier talk of showing solidarity with Zimbabwean dissenters and Darfuris is just talk.
I think the right role for Palin would have been prime-time keynote speaker, like Obama 2004.
In terms of Pawlenty vs. Palin, experience is far from the only issue. Palin appears to have given very little thought or study at all to national level issues, domestic or foreign. That does not appear to the case with Pawlenty.
Daniel, for example, has no “experience” at all, yet he is more prepared for the vice presidency than Palin because he has studied and thought about national level issues.
Heck, I’d vote for him (Daniel, not Pawlenty), despite being fundamentally at odds with him on every virtually every issue save our nation’s role in the world.
Given his anti-enlightenment views, I even have a campaign slogan for him. “Daniel Larison: forget about returning America to1950, let’s turn the clock back to 1650.”
All kidding aside, though, while I hope that Daniel is right that the Palin bubble will pop, I’m not as sanguine as he is. In a rational world, Pawlenty would have been a great pick electorally, and Palin a lousy one. But I’m afraid we don’t live in that rational world.
Daniel, I understand and appreciate your skepticism about the woman.
I do think, however, that you underestimate just how effective she is on the stump–not because she says anything especially profound, but because as a campaigner, she’s a natural.
What’s more, love her or despise here, there’s a fascination with this woman that’s quite extraordinary.
Could she crash and burn with a revelation, a gaffe, or in the debate? Sure. But don’t count on it. Some rookie pitchers turn out to be 20-game winners.
That said, I am not inclined to vote for McCain, for reasons similar to yours.
I certainly would have preferred Pawlenty to either Romney or Lieberman. In fact I agree with just about everything in the original link except for the premise that McCain was a loser except before Palin. Obama-Biden is a weak ticket and would have lost.
But the choice of Palin builds the foundation to rebuild the GOP post-Bush, which I would think Daniel would favor.
Judges are for me a very significant reason to vote McCain. If I thought that WWIII was significantly more likely if he got elected, however, I’d be willing to put judges on the back burner. But I think that while McCain himself might be a bit more trigger happy than Obama, it is extremely unlikely that McCain would be able to get the public support for a war he would need. Obama, on the other hand, just might be able to sell the country on WWIII.
Another relevant factor is how much control we’ll have over whether WWIII happens. The Russians have been acting like absolute lunatics, and I appreciate the fact that McCain seems to appreciate that. The relevant point, however, is that merely delaying WWIII while letting our enemies gain strategic advantages is not something to want. And neither is avoiding WWIII at the cost of countries like Russian and China ascending to such power that military resistance to them wouldn’t deserve to be called a world war. (I.e., Russia and China expand their territories and no one stands up to them. Eventually, they possess such military power, resources, and strategically located property that the only option to effectively resist them is nuclear. This is essentially the reverse of the situation now with Russia and NATO. But Russia’s territorial integrity is not threatened by NATO at all–Russia has no reason to fear NATO. If the tables were turned I think it would be rational for, say, Poland to fear the Russians indeed.)
I agree that Pawlenty does have significantly more executive experience, but that isn’t the issue. (As we’re all tired of hearing, Palin has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined.) Someone above made the relevant point, I think: official experience or not, Palin just hasn’t been thinking about foreign policy issues very much (less than Pawlenty) over the last 20 years. I think we have pretty good reason to believe that at this point. And that is a significant negative for her. That doesn’t mean, however, that people weren’t jumping the gun when they were on her case before the Gibson interview, unless they had special information. Being right doesn’t justify saying things that one doesn’t have sufficient reason to believe.
SO tempting to reply to the sadly misguided posts of Koz and Johnny 5, but I’ll let Daniel dispose of them. (Except to remark that the … sorry, I’ll say it … laughable first paragraph … is an almost perfect distillation of the disordered thinking that has propelled the United States along the deeply misguided foreign policy path we are pursuing.
Instead, let me go off topic, inspired by my own little campaign slogan for Daniel above. Daniel, I’ve always been curious as to your take on 1692 and 1776. I lump them together because I think the latter was to a large extent the product of the former. On the one hand, you have kind words about the founding father and the English constitutional tradition that they held dear. On the other hand, 1692 and 1776 were very much products of the enlightenment, and were (unintentionally to a large extent) the precoursers of modern mass democracy. Whereas if you are really going to take a consistent pre-enlightenment point of view, I’d think that that would make you a fan of the Stuarts (who have gotten a slightly bad rap from history, the victor writes the history books, etc., see Norman Davies for a corrective), and, to a much lesser extent, George III.
That should have been second paragraph, not first, and I was referring to Johnny 5′s post of course. His first paragraph, while of course not persuasive to me, quite the contrary, probably does represent the sole positive argument for McCain from a conservative perspective – at least from the perspective of conservatives who don’t want to blow up the world.
I’m not sure there’s much that needs saying. Does anyone really think that we are in danger of having to submit to Russia or China without a fight? The Russians are not our enemies, nor are we theirs, even though our government sometimes acts as if this were the case. We’re arguing these days about whether or not to bring former parts of their country into our obsolete military alliance, and the *Russians* have been acting like absolute lunatics? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
Golly. Well, I do hope someone will help me out of this muddle. Where have I gone wrong?
(1) Obama might be less likely to start WWIII, but no one can prevent someone else from starting it.
(2) If it were going to happen, delaying it significant strategic cost isn’t advisable
Or…qualifying (1) – war can always be avoided simply by surrendering (perhaps in piecemeal fashion). But that isn’t an acceptable way out.
Or…qualifying (1) – it may well be that WE can avoid war by not getting involved in a European conflict. But we have a moral obligation to defend our allies, so this is not an acceptable way out.
Or…qualifying (1) – if we could get out of our alliances, we might be able to avoid war without violating any promise. I find this option morally objectionable, but I understand the motives for taking it. But surely anyone can understand someone who thinks that standing by while certain nations invade and conquer other “innocent” nations is wrong. Is this way of thinking disordered, sadly misguided, and laughable?
In any case, my point was that deciding who to vote for by determining who will be less likely to get us involved in WWIII while they’re in office is not a good decision procedure (I’m NOT attributing this dp to Daniel). Better to decide who will reduce the chances that there will be a WWIII at all, and secondly who will act such that if there is, God forbid, a third world war, it will have the best outcome possible. It seems to me at least arguable that taking a very strong stance against Russia now may well reduce the chances of a third world war etc. I’m happy to be informed why this is not the case, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to consider.
“Does anyone really think that we are in danger of having to submit to Russia or China without a fight?”
No, I don’t think we’re in danger of that happening. I’m sorry if I gave that impression.
“The Russians are not our enemies, nor are we theirs, even though our government sometimes acts as if this were the case.”
According to the news sources I read, it is the Russians who have been intpreting our actions as the actions of an enemy they should be suspicious of. I myself found it initially humorous to think that the Russians still think of us as their enemies. But isn’t it clear that many very important Russians do think that?
“We’re arguing these days about whether or not to bring former parts of their country into our obsolete military alliance, and the *Russians* have been acting like absolute lunatics? That just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Well, we could both be acting like lunatics. I grant that `lunatic’ might be a bit hyperbolic. But the Russians have been behaving in ways that are frightening and threatening. It is both frightening and threatening to hear that Putin thinks that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th Century was the breakup of the Soviet Union. And likewise Russian’s invasion of Georgia was frightening and threatening. (If we did something comparable it would be an inexcusable disgrace). Furthermore, many of the actions of the government inside Russia – limiting freedom of the press, for example – are frightening and threatening. Finally, the assassination of political enemies in foreign lands in frightening and threatening.
“If we did something comparable it would be an inexcusable disgrace”
Oh, my god, I have to avoid reading Johnny 5′s posts while drinking soda; I sit it all over my keyboard which is now a wet, sticky mess. I was a little tempted to start engaging Mr. Johnny’s “arguments,” but now I’m (mostly) convinced that he is an intentional self parody.
But on the off chance that it is not, I would simply say that we have done many, many, things that are “comparable” – well, no, technically speaking, things that are much worse – and, yes, indeed, those actions on our part were inexcusable.
“And likewise Russian’s invasion of Georgia was frightening and threatening.”
To whom? To the Georgians, I grant you, but who else was threatened by it? Whose government is more frightening and threatening to other states–the one that launches a week-long raid into a neighboring country after a provocation, or one that sends its forces to the other side of the planet because it can and then occupies another country for several years?
Russian officials and many Russian citizens have come once again to regard us as an enemy because our government acts like an enemy of Russia. Having had their country invaded three times in the last two centuries, and remembering the Time of Troubles as the depths of Russian humiliation that should never be permitted again, many Russians are deeply suspicious of encroachment from the West and some probably view the promotion of nationalists on their borders as a reprise of German tactics from the world wars aimed at undermining Russian power. Americans have responded with the same anxiety about foreign intrusions into our hemisphere, and we would be just as concerned if Mexico and Cuba were offered membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. If provoked seriously enough, our government would attack Cuba with the same impunity as Russia did in Georgia. Understanding this and avoiding provocations of the sort our government has made in recent years would go a long way to reducing the perception that our interests and Russian interests are deeply at odds.
My advice is to stop doing extremely provocative things (e.g., missile defense in eastern Europe) that make the Russians suspicious of their neighbors, don’t make security guarantees we aren’t going to keep anyway and definitely don’t halt cooperation on areas of genuine common interest, such as securing nuclear materials. That doesn’t mean that we have to abandon friendly relations and commerce with their neighbors, but we need to make very clear that we are not using those relations as a cover for advancing our own power projection into Russia’s backyard. To a significant degree, we are the ones who invest anti-Moscow political forces with the label democratic or liberal and this reinforces the perception among Russians that democrat is simply a code for “Western puppet.” If Washington had wanted to go about deliberately making democracy a curse word in Russia, it could not have done better than the policies it has pushed for the last 18 years. I suggest we try something else and see if the Russians don’t respond favorably to respect. We are usually pretty good about taking Chinese concerns about their reputation into account when dealing with them, and we enjoy stable, gradually improving relations with Beijing–why our government is so oblivious about Russians’ sense of national honor, I will never understand.
Daniel,
You are a better man than I am for wading into it with Johnny; my guess is that it won’t work. And, really, his comments are an almost perfect illustration of why it is so hard to reverse course once a nation embarks upon the road to hegemony.
Do you really think, though, that the Time of Troubles is a significant factor in how Russians view these things? The past 200 years I’ll grant you, but 1598-1613?
I have to confess, though, that, despite having zero Polish ancestry, and being a strict non-interventionist, the thought of Polish Hussars in the streets of Moscow, as well as the bloated borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, has always brought a smile to my face. I also have a (very) warm place in my heart for the government of said Commonwealth, including the liberum veto, though obviously history’s judgment was none too kind. If not for its long demise, I always though that its form of government was a decent answer to the question of “so, what alternative do you propose to mass democracy?”
Speaking of Poland, though, and provocation, it might be relevant to mention that there were invading Polish in the streets of Kiev less than 100 years ago. And, depending upon how one counts, Russian soil has arguably been invaded five or more times in the past 200 years.
LM – Sorry my arguments aren’t up to your standards. That is a risk one incurs when one gives arguments, however. I must admit that I haven’t detected a single flaw in any of the arguments you’ve given on this thread. Then again, you haven’t given any. If you did, it would help me latch onto the standard of rigor you expect. Oh, and by the way, `if we did something comparable it would be an inexcusable disgrace’ does not imply that we have not done things that were inexcusable disgraces. Unfortunately, it is possible to disgrace oneself more than once.
Daniel,
Thanks for the response. I hope this hasn’t been too tedious. I would stop now, especially as LM’s little comments are starting to affect my mood, but it is difficult for me to think we really disagree about much here.
As to your first question, Russian’s invasion of Georgia was frightening and threatening to me and everyone I know (who knows anything about it). What rational person is not frightened by such things? According to the news it was frightening and threatening to Russia’s other neighbors. And it seems quite reasonable to believe that, given the timid response of certain western European nations, that they were rather frightened and threatened as well.
You grant that many Russian officials and citizens think of us as the enemy. And if Russian officials and citizens think of us as their enemy, isn’t that a cause for serious concern. Isn’t it a bit frightening and threatening? I think the vast majority of the minority of Americans who consider Russia an enemy think of Russia as an enemy as a result of Russia thinking of us as an enemy.
I believe that under the current world order, Russia is not going to be invaded unless they provoke a war. And I think that it is unreasonable to deny this. (Under what circumstances would Russia be invaded?) Hence I think the worries of the Russians are paranoid, which makes them more frightening. Do you disagree with any of this?
In any case, my point was simply that while McCain might be more likely to start a war with Russia, there is a more or less negligible chance that McCain would do that. It follows that, insofar as it is rational to worry about WWIII breaking out, we should worry more about how it turns out than whether the president of the US will start it.
I do think we need to be very prudent indeed in not provoking Russia to start WWIII–say, by arguing for accepting Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. (Something both Obama and McCain support, so a wash there.) But that doesn’t change the fact that Ukraine and Georgia becoming NATO members is in no way a threat to Russia’s territorial integrity, and if Russia started WWIII because of that, we may have done something terribly imprudent, but they will have done something terribly wrong. And I’m worried that there is a non-negligible chance that appeasement will have the same outcome now that it did 70 years ago.
Upshot: We’re not going to start a war. Obama and McCain have the same attitude towards the foreseeable actions that might provoke Russia into starting a war. McCain is perhaps less likely to appease Russia, but why think that will increase instead of decrease the chances of WWIII occurring? Hence, I don’t see McCain as non-negligibly increasing the chances of WWIII.
PS – The stuff about national honor doesn’t move me. Europe will never be at peace unless such sentiments dwindle. There is just no way to carve the place up such that no one will feel their national honor to have been violated.