One thing we ought to be giving John McCain credit for in his selection of Sarah Palin is the mere fact of his having taken a risk. Indeed, being behind in the election -- and I
think McCain probably will wind up being a couple of points behind once
the respective convention bumps play out -- necessitates taking a risk.
Suppose, for instance, that McCain is 2 points down in the election.
Suppose furthermore than there is a 50 percent chance that Palin boosts
his standing by 3 points, and a 50 percent chance that she makes a
major gaffe that costs McCain 10 points. That's actually a pretty good
gamble for McCain to take, since he'd wind up winning the election 50
percent of the time (by one point) and getting blown out the other 50
percent of the time (by 12 points) -- better than losing the election
by 2 points 100 percent of the time.
Obviously,
that is an idealized rendering of an exceptionally complicated dynamic,
but the whole reason to make a game-changing pick is because you're
losing the game. And that McCain apparently made this pick on Thursday,
after having seen that Bill and Hillary Clinton had exceeded all
possible expectations in rallying their supporters behind Barack Obama,
showed a certain awareness of the political landscape.
Then again, I think there was a better
risk for McCain to take, which would have been picking a pro-choice
candidate and calling out the religious right's bluff. You want a
really terrific pick? How about Olympia Snowe, who has held down a
senate seat in a blue state for 14 years, and who has a formidable
resume.
***
But ultimately, we are in completely
uncharted territory here. Palin is the most manifestly ordinary person
ever to be nominated for a major party ticket. In this year of
bittergate and Britney-gate and McCain-has-seven-houses-gate, that
could conceivably be a virtue; it's certainly less tone-deaf than a
selection like Mitt Romney would have been.
But Palin isn't merely playing
at being ordinary, the way that Bill Clinton (Rhodes Scholar) or George
W. Bush (son of a president) or Hillary Clinton (wife of a president)
might. She really, really comes across that way -- like someone who had
won a sweepstakes or an essay contest. Her authenticity factor is
off-the-charts good; her biography sings. But do Americans really want their next-door-neighbor running for Vice President, or rather someone who seems like one?
--Nate Silver