A Face That Sank McCain’s Ship? Not Likely
Palin’s beauty is not a political deficit, so why does Kathleen Parker assert that because Palin is beautiful, she is to be presumed unqualified? It’s envy, motivated by the same sour-grapes psychology that caused so many Republican pundits to dismiss Romney as “superficial” and “slick.” ~Robert Stacy McCain
That isn’t what Parker said. For the record, I don’t think Parker’s argument in her latest column holds up very well, since the idea that McCain made the poor decision to select Palin because she was attractive assumes that McCain normally makes good decisions when not influenced by this kind of thing. But Parker’s argument is not what R.S. McCain claims. She doesn’t say that Palin is to be presumed unqualified because she is attractive, but that Palin is objectively unqualified for the job she is seeking (Parker and others have already made their case about this before) and so there must be some reason why McCain made such a phenomenally bad selection. Parker goes awry in two ways here: she assumes that McCain was fully informed about Palin’s qualifications or lack thereof and chose her anyway, when we are pretty sure that this isn’t true, and she does not take into consideration that McCain may make irrational and poor decisions for entirely different reasons. In its way, Parker’s column is giving John McCain the benefit of the doubt and giving him more credit for good judgement than he probably deserves by treating his mistake as a result of Palin’s appearance.
As for Romney, he was considered superficial and slick because he seemed to have no core political beliefs that he would not abandon at the drop of a hat if there was some advantage in it. He had looks and competence, but he seemed to have absolutely no shame when it came to reinventing his public persona into whatever he thought a given audience wanted.
8 Responses to “A Face That Sank McCain’s Ship? Not Likely”
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I don’t quite agree. I agree that this column is weaker than her other columns on this subject, but Parker specifically noted that when asked about her knowledge of issues, an adviser said that he didn’t know. So I don’t believe that she assumes that McCain was fully informed about Palin’s (lack of) qualifications. I do agree that he may make irrational and poor decisions for other reasons.
I think it softens the blow against his judgment from one point of view, but whacks it harder from another, in that it is sexist – he thought with his cojones and proved to be very shallow indeed.
(Sank. Had sunk. Just sayin’.)
Palin’s attractiveness was part of what may have sunk McCain’s ship. But if you read the account in this week’s New Yorker of the NRO-sponsored Palin-meeting cruises to Alaska, Kristol’s infatuation with the governor is most to blame. He wasted his cred on promoting her indefatigably to McCain. And McCain was dumb enough to suspend his judgment — to ruinous effect for his campaign.
Thanks. I realized the screw-up, and have now fixed it.
To be fair to Parker, in light of your comment that McCain frequently makes bad decisions anyway, I think she’s simply pointing to one example of how and why McCain makes a lot of bad decisions: he goes with his “instincts”, rather than making calm and cool intelligent decisions. In Palin’s case, his “instincts” were to go with the hot, beautiful babe, and to ignore sounder rationales and the vetting process. It’s not that sexual attraction is the only instinct McCain lets interfere with his judgment, however. There are numerous examples, such as his instinctual reaction to the Russia-Georgia conflict. I think if one examines all of McCain’s bad judgments, one will almost always find that it’s due to him allowing his instinctual emotions to override his capacity for sounder judgment. Call this my GTM (General Theory of McCain). So you are right that even if Palin hadn’t been beautiful, McCain would probably have flubbed the VP pick by going with some other instinctual drive of his, rather than make a sound and thougtful decision. He probably would have picked Lieberman out of loyalty and “instinct”, which would have been a terrible decision for entirely different reasons, but once again the result of McCain acting from his gut rather than his brain.
Now, I’m not saying that people should make all decisions logically and patiently weighing all factors. Some people certainly do have very refined and intelligent instincts. McCain just isn’t one of them. He allows the lowest of his instincts to blind him to what’s going on, and then he makes bad decisions that he has to use his intellect to defend, and that just doesn’t work out very well.
Andrew Sullivan thinks Parker is on to something.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/kathleen-parker.html
My guess is that McCain has poor executive and managerial skills. Remember – he’s a Senator. He probably didn’t just go with his instinctive feeling, but simply didn’t do enough vetting, and didn’t get her prepared soon enough – which he could have started doing *months* before he had actually made a decision. If he went with his gut feeling without due diligence, that’s quite different from going with his gut feeling after getting all the relevant info. Many good execs probably do the latter, not what McCain did.
Then, she was handled very poorly *after* she was picked. Start with a huge, hyped up interview with a hostile interviewer for goodness’ sake? That’s poor strategy. McCain’s campaign imploded in the primaries due to poor fiscal management, and seems to have been plagued by internal dissent anyway (due to poor management).
He probably picked Palin for some good reasons – reformer who bucked her own party, telegenic, executive experience herself – but for some deluded reason thought he could get away with it while she was totally unprepared on national issues.
[Mitt Romney] seemed to have absolutely no shame when it came to reinventing his public persona into whatever he thought a given audience wanted.
This sentence exaggerates far past the frontier of Not So, in my view. Not so.
Upthread, I didn’t link the New Yorker article about how McCain came to pick Palin, whose face is sinking a thousand ships. Here it is.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic blogger, read it and pronounced that Kristol, Barnes, Nordlinger, Hanson, and Limbaugh were played like “herbs by a hot chick.” (I think “herb” is rapper slang for dork.) Coates says they all appeared to be thinking, well, with the wrong head:
This sounds right to me. Their shameless cheerleading, together with McCain’s dismal electoral prospects, appears to have short-circuited what should have been a sober and responsible VP selection process.