McCain VP Pick Exposes Dems As Elitist

When John McCain named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential running mate, I was sitting at the bar of New York City's oldest saloon, Pete's Tavern, watching the event with my 81-year-old father and four of his long-time friends.

The initial reaction of these retired city cops and longshoremen to Mrs. Palin was positive. A gun-toting beauty queen, mother of five, married to a blue-collar union member and small business entrepreneur, who by hard work and a touch of audacity beat a corrupt political establishment - what's not to like? They'd all be proud to have a granddaughter with half of these achievements.

While the octogenarians were nodding approval, I heard snickers from the white-collar lunch time crowd. One woman said, "A mother of five? Guess there's nothing else to do in Alaska besides making babies." There were other snide comments about her hairstyle, eyeglass frames and her lifelong membership in the NRA.

The loudest snicker in the aftermath of the McCain-Palin rally came from the Obama camp. Spokesman Bill Burton, delivering the immediate official Obama reaction said, "Today John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency."

I was not surprised by the remark, after all, Mr. Burton was in sync with his candidate, Barack Obama, who, during the primary season, complained that small town Americans were bitter folks driven to guns and religion.

Mr. Obama and his inner circle are prone to these gaffes because they suffer from the same infection that has plagued their party for half a century - elitism.

The Democratic Party that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s was dominated by social engineers who embraced Adlai Stevenson because he was, in Michael Barone's judgment, "the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class culture - the prototype of the liberal democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting." Stevenson's cultural elitism and contempt for the blue-collar worker engendered a new generation of politicians whose roots were grounded not in the "fragmented local politics, which Franklin Roosevelt and his contemporaries had grown up with, but instead in the "centralized national politics which had grown up with the large central government produced by Roosevelt's New Deal and wartime politics."

Blue-collar workers, mostly Catholics, fled the party in droves because, as Mario Cuomo put it, they "felt alienated by a new Democratic Party which [they] thought neither understood nor related to [them]."

The new generation of Democratic elites may underestimate the power Gov. Sarah Palin brings to the Republic ticket - particularly among blue-collar pro-life Catholics in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio and pro-gun folks in the western states.

One person who grasps the significance of the Palin candidacy is the last woman nominated for vice president, Democrat Geraldine Ferraro.

The daughter of immigrant blue-collar parents, Ms. Ferraro was born in the small town of Newburgh, N.Y., moved to a Bronx neighborhood at age eight after her father died, and worked her way through college and law school. When nominated for vice president she was 48 years old, the mother of three and was married 24 years.

Was Ms. Ferraro's political resume a little thin when she became the Democratic nominee? Yes. Previously, she worked for her cousin, Queens County District Attorney Nick Ferraro, as an Assistant D.A. and served only three terms in Congress representing "Archie Bunker" neighborhoods.

This modest background did not stop Walter Mondale from praising Ms. Ferraro as being highly qualified. In fact, he boasted that "she had a strong family life, deep religious convictions and working Americans of average income will find her a vice president who knows them and will fight for them.

And it didn't stop the editors of the New York Times from making this pronouncement:

"Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become president? ... Or where is it written that mere representatives aren't qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens? ... Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?... Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy. ... On occasion, Americans find it necessary to rationalize this rough-and-ready process. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. This rationale may even be right, but then let it also be fair. Why shouldn't a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow? We may even be gradually elevating our standards for choosing vice presidential candidates. But that should be done fairly, also. Meanwhile, the indispensable credential for a Woman Who is the same as for a Man Who - one who helps the ticket."

There is, however, one big difference: Mrs. Palin is pro-life while Ms. Ferraro is pro-choice. (In 1984, she said, "I don't believe in abortion, but I can't impose my belief.") Yet, Ms. Ferraro, in a New York Post interview, not only brushed off the claim that Palin was unqualified, but "reject[ed] the idea that all the so-called Hillary voters would be repelled by Mrs. Palin's staunch anti-abortion views. These voters know the Senate will have a veto-proof Democratic majority, so that lessens the potency of that issue."

During the remainder of the campaign, Mr. Obama must be vigilant that neither he, his loquacious running mate Joe Biden, or his arrogant handlers make condescending remarks about Mrs. Palin's abilities. An off-comment can easily backfire and shine the spotlight on Mr. Obama's scant qualifications and experience to hold the nation's highest elective office.

I have no doubts Sarah Palin is up to the job of vice president. When State Sen. Obama was, only few years ago, sheepishly dodging sensitive votes in the Illinois State Legislature to avoid political setbacks, Sarah Palin, unconcerned with the political fall out, was fearlessly taking down Alaska's corrupt Republican establishment and Big Oil. And when Mr. Obama was sitting around the fashionable Hyde Park section of Chicago, philosophizing with the 1970s underground Weather terrorist, William Ayers, Mrs. Palin was in the rough Alaskan outdoors working with her hands, hunting bear and fishing salmon to feed her family.

Mrs. Palin will succeed because unlike the vainglorious Mr. Obama, she has true grit.

Average Americans will realize, just as my father and his buddies did at Pete's Tavern, that Mrs. Palin is that rarity in politics - a real person, just like us. John McCain has hit a home run with his surprising selection of a representative of the silent majority, Sarah Palin.

George J. Marlin is the author of The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact. Adapted from www.thecatholicthing.com.

The post I was responding to by “rightazrain” said Palin was the next Reagan..
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McCain VP Pick Exposes Dems As Elitist
09/02/2008 4:08:10 PM · 19 of 22
AlanGreenSpam to rightazrain
As much as I like Palin, she’s no Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a great orator at her age with and without a teleprompter.

Palin is not so great off teleprompter.

In a sexist sense, I think the voters will cut her slack BECAUSE she’s female - especially in the forthcoming debate with PIT BULL BIDEN.

If he so much as tries to “bloody her nose,” the voters are going to think he’s a bully. So McCain has neutered the pit bull Dem VP in choosing Palin. He’s tied Biden’s hands.

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