Quote:
The Denver Post:
“I served with Hillary Clinton. I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. You, Sarah Palin, are no Hillary Clinton.” Sorry to steal Joe Biden’s thunder, but we didn’t want to wait for the vice presidential candidates’ debate to say the obvious. Yes, John McCain, who argues with a straight face that Barack Obama’s 12 years in the Illinois legislature and U.S. Senate aren’t enough to qualify him to run for president, has picked a running mate who just two years ago was serving as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 5,470. In short, the presumptive Republican nominee, an Old Soldier in all senses of that term, drafted the political equivalent of the Unknown Soldier as his co-pilot. McCain’s pick of Palin jettisons his attack that Obama isn’t ready to lead and looks more like a desperate “Hail Mary” campaign tactic aimed at female voters.
Quote:
Detroit News:
…Palin, 44, with less than two years as governor and no foreign policy experience, can’t be sold as ready to step into the presidency if called upon. Arizona Sen. McCain, if he wins, will be 72 when he takes office, and the question of succession is likely to be a concern for voters.
Quote:
Kansas City Star:
But as this newspaper noted earlier this week, the most important question in evaluating a vice-presidential pick is whether that person is prepared to step into the Oval Office. Palin, with no national political experience and only a couple years in the Alaska governor’s office, is a very tough sell for the Republicans on that score. McCain’s age — he turned 72 on Friday — certainly doesn’t help. The Republican presidential candidate has emphasized the importance of military and national security issues, and taken shots at Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama the Democratic presidential nominee for having only four years of experience in the U.S. Senate. Yet McCain now suggests that someone halfway through her first term as governor is “exactly who this country needs” only one step away from the presidency
Quote:
Tampa Bay Tribune:
John McCain can forget about trying to make a campaign issue out of Barack Obama’s relatively thin foreign policy resume. In an effort to blunt Obama’s post convention momentum, McCain made history Friday by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the first woman to be nominated for vice president by the GOP. It is a risky move that stunned even some party leaders who fear that voters will have trouble imagining the former beauty queen as commander in chief, if it should ever come to that. The 44-year-old Palin, a former small-town mayor serving her first term as governor, has no experience in foreign policy.
Quote:
Washington Post:
But the most important question Mr. McCain should have asked himself about Ms. Palin was not whether she could help him win the presidency. It was whether she is qualified and prepared to serve as president should anything prevent him from doing so. This would have been true for any presidential nominee, and it was especially crucial that Mr. McCain — who turns 72 today — get this choice right…In this regard, count us among the puzzled and the skeptical…Once the buzz over Ms. Palin’s nomination dies down, the hard questions about her will begin. The answers will reflect on her qualifications — and on Mr. McCain’s judgment as well.
Quote:
New York Times:
Governor Palin’s lack of experience, especially in national security and foreign affairs, raises immediate questions about how prepared she is to potentially succeed to the presidency. That really is the only criteria for judging a candidate for vice president.
Quote:
Los Angeles Times:
What happened to his insistence that a running mate be qualified to serve as commander in chief? …An even better example is George H.W. Bush’s choice of Dan Quayle in 1988. That selection, like McCain’s, was designed partly to placate restive Republican conservatives. Those are not persuasive precedents. In one respect, McCain is in even less of a position to gamble than were Mondale and Bush. His age makes it especially important that his running mate be prepared to assume the presidency at a moment’s notice.
Quote:
Boston Globe:
In picking a first-term governor with no foreign-policy record, the Republican presidential candidate undermined his own central themes - experience and national security - and exposed the deep fault lines within his campaign…But the pick is hard to square with what Republicans have been saying all week: that Obama is too green to be president. Because Obama has bared his soul in a bestselling memoir and his decisions have been under a microscope for the last four years, voters can assess his judgment. Palin, in contrast, has next to no track record. Her ticketmate would be the oldest first-term president ever and has had health troubles in the past. McCain, meanwhile, is struggling to accommodate Palin within the logic of his campaign, which up to now stressed an existential threat from Islamic fundamentalism.
Quote:
Miami Herald:
Political strategists say Clinton’s rank-and-file supporters will be tough for McCain and Palin to win. The ticket’s strong anti-abortion positions make them anathema to liberal Democrats concentrated in places such as South Florida…On Friday, she may have made her first official flip flop, saying that she opposed the so-called ”bridge to nowhere” that became a symbol of pork-barrel Washington spending. Yet in 2006, her spokesman told the Associated Press that she supported the project.
Quote:
Philadelphia Daily News:
Franklin & Marshall College pollster Terry Madonna said that Palin’s personal story is an asset but that he would describe McCain’s pick in three words. “Risky, risky and risky,” Madonna said. “We just don’t know how she’ll handle the next nine weeks of campaigning, dealing with all these complicated national and international issues, debating
Joe Biden, and having every word scrutinized by an aggressive press corps.” The greatest unanswered question is whether putting Palin on the ticket will bring many Clinton Democrats into the McCain column. The Daily News reached five women who were Clinton primary-election supporters in a March poll, and none said Palin’s candidacy would change their vote.
Quote:
Chicago Tribune:
John McCain has described national security, defense, the war in Iraq and the war on terror as “the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day.” So who did he choose for his running mate? Someone who has zero acquaintance with those issues. The first and last question to be asked about a potential vice president is: Is he or she prepared to take over immediately as president? Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden gave that matter the priority it deserves. The question is even more important for McCain because he’s 72 years old and has had serious health problems. The chances are considerably higher than usual that his vice president would have to step into the Oval Office without notice…this decision mocks McCain’s seriousness on the issues that are supposed to be his strength. It tells us that he puts his own political fortunes above the safety of the nation. McCain has done a lot of things for his country. He should have done one more and picked a running mate who makes a plausible commander-in-chief.
Quote:
New York Times (Gail Collins):
He was looking for someone who was well prepared to fight against international Islamic extremism, the transcendent issue of our time. And in the end he decided that in good conscience, he was not going to settle for anyone who had not been commander of a state national guard for at least a year and a half. He put down his foot!…I do feel kind of ticked off at the assumptions that the Republicans seem to be making about female voters…The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong.
Quote:
TIME (Amy Sullivan):
It appears Sarah Palin was picked not just for her appeal to women voters but also to please social conservatives. If so, this could be Harriet Miers redux. And that didn’t work out so well the first time.
Quote:
TIME (Mike Murphy):
McCain’s mighty and oft-swung Obama swatting hammer of experience has been instantly changed from steel to rubber. VP examination stakes are a little higher for McCain, will she pass the ready on Day One test with less than two years in a (small) statehouse? Former full Colonel in the Pat Buchanan brigades...
Quote:
ABC News (Jake Tapper - yes, THAT Jake Tapper!):
Palin doesn’t exactly scream “experience,” which is McCain’s main argument against Obama. For a decade she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, which has a population of approximately 8,471, which the Obama campaign says is less than 1/20th the size of his former state senate district. Palin has been governor for two years. Some might argue that in terms of experience she makes Obama look like Robert Byrd. In July, Palin told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that “as for that VP talk all the time, I tell ya, I still can’t answer that question until, until somebody answers for me ‘What it is exactly that the vice president does every day?”
Quote:
Chicago Tribune (Mark Silva):
When Obama was looking at Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia as a possible running mate, Karl Rove, the “architect” of President Bush’s election campaigns, dismissed his experience - a governor for three years and mayor of 103rd largest Richmond. We’re not sure where Wasilla ranks.
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