Making a case for mavericks in St. Paul

Despite a delayed start due to Hurricane Gustav, John McCain used the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., this week to rally the Republican base behind his surprise vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, while buttressing his own standing as a maverick who will shake up Washington. Party leaders and a former Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent, testified to McCain’s independent spirit, his courage, and his character, forged in five years as a prisoner of war. In a brief speech delivered via satellite, President Bush aided McCain’s effort to distance himself from an unpopular White House. “He’s not afraid to tell you when he disagrees,” the president said. “Believe me, I know.”

The campaign’s reform theme was muddied by the controversy over McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate. Palin, a 44-year-old pro-life social conservative and avid hunter who has served 20 months as governor after ousting a corrupt incumbent, was extremely popular among Republican delegates. But a stream of revelations, including the announcement that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant, put the McCain campaign on the defensive. Palin’s convention speech, like McCain’s, was scheduled to be made after The Week went to press. But her ability to withstand intense press scrutiny—and to win over rural and working-class voters—instantly became a critical factor in the election. “There’s no middle ground on this,” said former Bush advisor Dan Bartlett. “She is either going to be a wild success or a spectacular failure.”

What the editorials said

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Hurricane Gustav actually helped McCain this week, said the Los Angeles Times. The storm “kept the unpopular president, and the even more unpopular vice president, away from the convention.” It also allowed McCain—who with Palin visited the Gulf Coast on Sunday to register concern for residents—to distance himself from the “ineptitude and indifference” of Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. “McCain once presented himself as the president’s opposite, but in recent months has begun to sound more like him.” He wisely seized this opportunity to show that he’s his “own man.”

His selection of Palin is more proof of that, said The Wall Street Journal. Not surprisingly, the liberal media—which was complaining just last week that McCain had become a conventional Republican—is now howling with outrage over his daring choice of an unknown. The Washington gasbags, of course, want a vice presidential nominee to be someone “they have already vetted,” someone whom “they’ve all met 10 times in the CNN green room.” Palin alarms them, as well as she might. Unlike Barack Obama, she has a proven track record of bringing “change” in challenging her state’s corrupt Republican machine.

What the columnists said

That yelling that you hear signals the return of the culture wars, said Jim VandeHei and David Paul Kuhn in Politico.com. “The selection of Palin—a new heroine of social conservatives—has helped reignite not only abortion but also other flash-point issues in a way few of McCain’s other vice presidential options would have done.” By drawing attention to hot-button social issues and cultural resentments, instead of Democratic-friendly issues like Iraq and the economy, Republicans hope to regain the initiative.

They just might, said Peter Robinson in The Wall Street Journal, because McCain’s performance as a candidate has been “startling.” He handled the Gustav distraction brilliantly, demonstrating that he finds it natural to put “the nation’s interest above partisan politics.” While the flashier Obama has been erratic and impossible to pin down, McCain has offered voters strength, dignity, and “an uncomplicated love of country.”

The Republican strategy is “crystal clear,” said Joe Klein in Time

.com. They believe McCain’s compelling biography will be destiny and that, as McCain’s campaign manager said this week, “issues don’t matter.” In effect, Republicans are gambling that the millions of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track “will turn to Republicans to clean up the mess that Republicans made.” Good luck with that strategy.

What next?

In choosing Palin, McCain has jettisoned the central argument of his campaign—that experience is a critical factor in weighing the candidates. McCain and Obama will now compete to be the candidate most likely to bring reform and change to Washington. “Whoever wins that argument,” said McCain advisor Mark Salter, “ultimately probably wins this thing.”