The Rowengartner Gambit

Palin is the latest piece of McCain quackery.

by David Faris

Before Obama picked six-term Delaware Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, GOP talking heads sternly recommended a seasoned Washington veteran to balance Obama's inexperience. New York Times columnist David Brooks even wrote a column practically begging for Biden himself.

If Democrats could have done the same thing for John McCain, they would have told the 72-year-old cancer survivor to pick someone who is inarguably qualified to assume the duties of president. Whatever you think of the contemporary GOP, this is not exactly a short list. Instead, McCain made the single worst casting decision since Hayden Christensen ruined the new Star Wars franchise.

The immediate benefits of Palin were obvious. She's appealing and likeable, and resembles no one more than the kick-ass Frances McDormand character in Fargo. Her selection was a jaw-dropper that totally obliterated coverage of Obama's magnificent convention speech. And as a full-blown, all-your-uterus-are-belong-to-us creationist fundamentalist, she mollifies the Spanish Inquisition wing of the Republican Party.

But the more you think about it, the less sense Palin makes. For purely tactical reasons, her selection removes the single plausible, non-ideological argument against Obama — the lack of experience. Two years ago Palin was a small-town mayor, and she has less than two years on the job as governor of Seward's Backwater. Whatever you think of Obama's résumé, he has almost four years of immersion in Washington politics and boasts a long record of intellectual engagement with the major domestic and international issues of the day.

By the standards of this pick, Michael Nutter would be qualified to be Obama's vice president. Nutter is actually vastly more qualified for higher office than Palin. Nutter was a member of the Philadelphia City Council — a legislative decision-making body for 1.4 million people — for 15 years, and has been the leader of the sixth-largest city in the U.S. for nine months. And as Republicans pedantically point out about Palin, he has "executive experience."

Countless pundits have called Palin a "Hail Mary" pass, but Palin is more like McCain's Rowengartner Gambit. In the 1993 film Rookie of the Year, a 12-year-old boy named Henry Rowengartner suddenly finds himself able to throw 100 mph after a freak accident. Signed by the hapless Chicago Cubs, he leads the team to the precipice of victory only to see his fastball desert him at the last moment. Unable to get anyone out on the merits, he uses a series of tricks (including the timeless "hidden ball") to secure the game's last outs.

Facing certain defeat at the hands of the guy conservatives (jealously) call the "Obamamessiah," McCain tried to do what Rowengartner did — use a gimmick to win even when the odds are hopelessly stacked against him. It would have been a great strategy if presidential politics were a Hollywood fairy tale.

It's hard to fathom what the McCain camp was thinking — maybe they saw the internals of tracking polls after Hillary Clinton's speech and decided the election was lost without a major gamble. But it's more likely that the choice was made to secure the wavering evangelical base of the Republican Party, which never trusted McCain to begin with.

Was Palin really the only person who could do that? It seems that every hour brings a new damaging revelation about the Alaska governor — how she hired a lobbyist to bring wildly disproportionate federal earmark funds to the tiny town of Wasilla when she was mayor, how she inappropriately fired a state official as part of a family feud, how she was actually in favor of the so-called Bridge to Nowhere before the political tide turned against it, how she was involved with the lunatic fringe Alaska Independence Party, and how she served as a director for a 527 organization affiliated with the corrupt and discredited Sen. Ted Stevens. And that's just the tip of the dogsled.

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Finally, the pregnancy of Palin's teenage daughter is not an opportunity for some kind of national learning moment, but rather a private family matter. Still, the McCain camp should've known that it would be a distraction during the Republican National Convention, and they must be worried that with all the negative press around Palin, there will be no bounce.

You can't help getting the sense that Palin's selection was a panic move made by Mr. Maverick without proper vetting, and the results of early polling indicate that it didn't work. Let's put it this way: When Intrade is taking odds on whether your VP pick will withdraw, you might question your decision-making process. The selection of Sarah Palin says a great deal about McCain's propensity to make bad decisions under pressure, and should make even his most ardent supporters question his judgment.

A number of prominent conservative hawks earned intellectual honesty points last week by blasting the pick. David Frum, who coined the phrase "axis of evil," wrote, "Ms. Palin's experience in government makes Barack Obama look like George C. Marshall." And Tireless Iraq War cheerleader Charles Krauthammer declared the choice of Palin "near suicidal" for McCain.

So far it's safe to say that McCain's Rowengartner Gambit isn't working out as well as it did for the Cubs.

David Faris is a frequent Slant contributor. To respond to his Slant, or to submit one of your, e-mail your 650-word submission to Brian Howard at bhoward@citypaper.net.