Maybe not. Frum responded with caution in the National Post to McCain's announcement Friday. As the day wore on, Frum found the selection sitting less and less well with him:
...It's a wild gamble, undertaken by our oldest ever first-time candidate for president in hopes of changing the board of this election campaign. Maybe it will work. But maybe (and at least as likely) it will reinforce a theme that I'd be pounding home if I were the Obama campaign: that it's John McCain for all his white hair who represents the risky choice, while it is Barack Obama who offers cautious, steady, predictable governance.
Here's I fear the worst harm that may be done by this selection. The McCain campaign's slogan is "country first." It's a good slogan, and it aptly describes John McCain, one of the most self-sacrificing, gallant, and honorable men ever to seek the presidency.
But question: If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency? [David Frum, "Palin," David Frum's Diary on National Review Online, 2008.08.29]
Taking risks is often an admirable quality. But if you run a business or organization, think about how you go about hiring people. Sure, every hire is a risk, and any good résumé or interview can turn out to be a sham. But when you hire someone, especially someone for the most important position in your organization, how often do you risk drawing from the bottom of the deck? And what would you think of other executives who did so?
Hmmm... sounds like another desperate Democrat post.
ReplyDeleteHmmm... Frum's a committed Republican.
ReplyDelete"If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?"
ReplyDeleteIt is my decision as a voter!
If Biden were the Dems Presidential pick and Obama the VP pick, the decision would be a lot easier for me.
It is my decision, and I am putting my country first, and thus I am NOT putting an untested, Chicago machine, community organizer, not even one term senator, in the Presidency!
ReplyDeleteNonnie
Meant you, not Frum.
ReplyDeleteAnon 6:53
So never mind me, Anon: what do you say to Republican Frum, or to a sensible businessman who realizes HR is not the department for risk-taking?
ReplyDelete...or to Republican apologist David Brooks, who writes the following in Monday's NYTimes:
ReplyDelete"[McCain] He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.
"Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled" [David Brooks, "What the Palin Pick Says," New York Times, 2008.09.01].
Never mind the "desperate" Democrats: McCain needs to answer the doubts of his own party.
[submitted by Anon, redacted for language]:
ReplyDelete"Barack Obama will be a great President, although it will admittedly be difficult to fix everything bush and his facist elites have ruined about a once great America. An old geezer who [follows Bush] and a cheap [woman] who believes (she REALLY believes) dinosaurs and humans lived together 4000 years ago and talks to invisible people! Even mcSame doesn't believe THAT--he should know: he was there."
9/30/2008 10:09 PM