Friday, August 29, 2008

Andrew Sullivan's take on McCain's VP pick

More here:

The more I think about it, the more staggered I am by the pick. It's totally about electioneering (misguidedly, I'd hazard, but I don't know enough about her to know yet) and fundamentally unserious about governing.

The first criterion for a veep - and I'm simply repeating a truism here - is that they are ready to take over at a moment's notice. That's especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That's more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two terms years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain's pick with Obama's: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.

One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity.

She may be a fine person, but she's my age, she has zero Washington experience, and no foreign policy expertise whatsoever.

McCain has just told us how seriously he takes the war we are in. Not seriously at all.

And while Obama has spent the last eighteen months running for the presidency--and convincing a majority of Democrats that he has the judgment, wisdom, and knowledge to be president--Palin has no publicly stated positions on any issues of foreign policy.

She's got a lot of catching up to do. (Here's her threadbare record on the issues; compare it to Biden's or Obama's.)

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