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The emperor-presumptive announces his successor, and we all bow down
It bothers me a great deal that this person of whom we knew nothing prior to last Friday, Sarah Palin, has been dropped into our lap, just a few days before she is to be nominated for vice president and thus become a possible next president of the United States. The whole process seems imperial rather than republican. I understand the custom whereby the designated presidential nominee announces his choice for vice presidential nominee, and his pledged delegates honor his preference. But when the vice presidential nominee is as new and unconventional as Palin, shouldn’t McCain have named her at least a couple of weeks prior to the convention, so as to give the country time to figure her out and “assimilate” her? In other words, give the public time do its own “vetting” process of her in addition to the McCain team’s? Look at what we’ve gone through in just the last four days—first, taking in this startlingly new political figure on Friday, and then, three days later, finding out things about her family that seem highly improper for a national candidate, and having to figure that out and adjust to that, and so on. We’ve been run through the wringer. And now tonight, five days after we first heard about her, and two days after we found out that her daughter is pregnant without benefit of matrimony, she is going to be nominated and give her acceptance speech. This is not the way a self-governing people ought to pick its national leaders. This Palin situation has a “jump the shark” quality. It’s deeply disordered and suggests a country that about to go off the rails. But that’s what happens when a major political party elects as its nominee a man who in his deepest core is mischievous and irresponsible. Remember that according to all press accounts McCain’s true preference for Republican vice presidential nominee was a pro-abortion, liberal Democrat, a choice he was prevented from making only by pure political necessity.
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