Posted on 09/02/2008 12:40:12 AM PDT by MartinaMisc
John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.
The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.
When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.
Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.
Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
wow someone who actually understands McCain and why he picked Palin
David Brooks has been making me unusually happy lately. A few great articles and I like this one as well.
Reform is the key. The Reformers.......John McCain...the Maverick.....and Sarah Palin....the Barracuda....are coming to clean up DC. Both parties have had issues with corruption, and targeting corruption where ever it appears should be a primary theme.
Does McCain really need a Cheney-type, and who would it be?
mark sanford?
I'm not sure this is true and, even if it is, why would the VP have to be this person? And if he does need such a person, maybe Dick Cheney would stay on - he knows more than nearly anybody else how things work. Go ahead and yell - I like VP Cheney and always have.
and I say this not because he’s a senior bureaucrat but because “a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.” He’s not just an ideological libertarian but he can argue for it on pragmatic grounds. A reason.org and not a reason.com man.
I didn’t see your post before I posted mine - #6.
This Mark Sanford?
When Palin becomes President, he should become VP.
yup
Brooks is looking for business as usual. Ain't gonna be. Get ready 'cause we gonna Rock and Roll.
petraeus would be good.
Petraeus belongs in the cabinet, but not sure he could (or should) engage with Congress in the way the author suggests. The author seems to suggest someone with the skills of a Speaker of the House.
Hastert? Surely not Gingrich. And I don’t think he’d cross the aisle for this kind of an appointment
Read all the way through to the end. Not so nice:
He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.
Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.
He may even understand Huckabee voters.
McCain does not need a doctrine everybody can understand.
Let them think he is a crazy cowboy with a crazy frontier woman as the second in command that will nuke a rogue state at the drop of a hat.
That would make a far more effective administration in foreign policy and even dealing with a Dem controlled congress.
Another Palin "expert." Hardly. Think McCain's corruption fighting plus Reagan's Americanism.
Come on folks, let's get real. 15,000 people wouldn't even begin to start to 'organize'(whatever that means) FedGov. It goes where it wants and you either pretend you are leading it, or pretend it isn't happening, ie, be delusional.
There is a saying “Actions speak louder than words”. So, if you want Washington to change who do you pick, Team McCain-Palin with a successful track record of changing things, or the team that just talks about it and has never changed anything?
Wow, an incredible analysis. I think you really have it figured out better than any one I read read here on FR. And I have read a lot these past 2 weeks.
Silliness. He just perfectly described the job of Chief of Staff, not VP.
Subtitles:
NY TImes Hedges Bets On Obama Win
Palin VP Pick Stops Scheduled Burning Of Last McCain Bridge
someone who can connect with the ‘folks’ and is pro-life and likes guns.
You can be a union worker or a waitress living off tips and relate to her. Reagan was able to ‘get’ this, so did Huckabee and now Palin.
basically the return of the Contract with America. Balance the budget, citizen legislature...Palin is the ultimate example of this.
Rob Portman or Bob Gates would have guaranteed a loss for McCain. The McSame slogan, or 4 more years of Bush, would have resonated through the MSM and the feeding frenzy would have made what we saw yesterday look like a walk in the park.
Rob Portman or Bob Gates would have guaranteed a loss for McCain. The McSame slogan, or 4 more years of Bush, would have resonated through the MSM and the feeding frenzy would have made what we saw yesterday look like a walk in the park.
Maybe he appoint Sarah Palin to make her a lightning rod for controversy. The John Edwards scandal was bound to lead to questions about John McCain having an affair while his wife was ill but actually leaving her for the mistress. There is also Cindy's embezzlement and so much more. What a crazy farce this election has become!
And if you use Brooks’ line of reasoning, the Biden pick is even more bizarre. Who can claim the change mantle? McCain / Palin without question.
Brooks’ bottom line:
McCain needs to be reigned in by a Cheney-like figure.
[In other words, McCain should have picked Cheney as his Veep nominee!]
There are lot of people ou there who will make good Chiefs of Staff. The reason for the position is that it allows the Prez to be what he is, not spend his time enmeshed in details.
We have a lot of great talent in the Repub party. It goes much deeper than you know.
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