McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin

[Wobbly Goblin]

McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin As Presidential Running Mate


Gov. Sarah Palin spoke to reporters in July regarding the indictment of U.S. Sen Ted Stevens in her Capitol office in Juneau, Alaska.

By LAURA MECKLER, ELIZABETH HOLMES and JIM CARLTON
August 29, 2008 12:37 p.m.

Sen. John McCain picked first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, adding a little-known but reform-minded woman to his ticket. At a rally in Dayton, Ohio, he said she has "strong principles, a fighting spirit and deep compassion," and praised her record of fighting corruption.

"She's exactly what this country needs to help me fight …the same old Washington politics of me first and country second," he told the raucus crowd.

The move is the most dramatic in a series of efforts to appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters still disappointed that she didn't capture the Democratic nomination. Gov. Palin also reinforces Sen. McCain's reformer image. She took on her state's political establishment that had been rocked by an FBI corruption investigation.

It's an untraditional pick, given that reliably Republican Alaska has never been a battleground state in the past, though Barack Obama has tried to put it into play. She's much less well known that other candidates who were believed to be on Sen. McCain's short list.

"She's not from these parts and she's not from Washington but when you get to know her you're going to be as impressed as I am," he said.

The pick was not problem free, though. Democrats immediately pounced on her thin resume, which runs the risk of undercutting a central attack by Sen. McCain against Sen. Obama: That he isn't ready to serve as president. The ability of Sen. McCain's vice president to step into the top job is seen as particularly important given his age: He turns 72 today and would be the oldest person ever to enter the White House.

Even as Alaska governor, Gov. Palin (pronounced PAY-lin) has been criticized for her sparse experience. "Sarah is a small town mayor running Alaska as if it's a small town," says Frank Smith, a former union and Democratic Party activist in Alaska. "McCain is out of his mind. He has no foreign policy experience and she'll help because she's been fishing in Canada."

Gov. Palin, 44 years old, will be just the second woman nominated as running mate for a major party. The first was Geraldine Ferraro who ran, and lost, with Walter Mondale in 1984.

The Republican Party's conservative base -- long wary of Sen. McCain and angry in recent weeks about hints he may pick a pro-choice running mate -- hailed the move.

"We are thrilled," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life Action, an anti-abortion group. In an email message, she wrote: "It's a BRILLIANT pick. In one move he energizes pro-lifers AND reaches out to Hillary supporters."

Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist, and former aide to Republican presidential candidates Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan, said in a blast email: "Governor Palin is a terrific contrast to the all Washington ticket of Obama-Biden. She is a wonderful contrast to Biden, and a truly outside the beltway pick."

Gov. Palin was one of a handful of governors interviewed by the press at February's gathering of the National Governors Association -- and the only one to openly admit that she would like to be Sen. McCain's vice president.

A handful of blogs that have long advocated for a McCain-Palin ticket were the first places of celebration. On the "Draft Sarah Palin for VP" blog, the host titled his post "WOW" followed by 13 exclamation points. "Put the champagne on ice and get ready for a party," the site reads.

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same," said Bill Burton, Obama campaign spokesman.

At a time when the Republican Party in Washington has become deeply unpopular, in part due to rampant Congressional corruption, Gov. Palin is seen as a symbolic antidote.

When she ran for governor as a Republican outsider in 2006, she took on not only a sitting governor from her own party but Alaska's Republican establishment -- vowing to clean up a political system that had been rocked by an FBI corruption investigation.

After winning handily, her popularity in Alaska has soared as high as 83% as she has gone on to sack political appointees with close ties to industry lobbyists, shelved pork projects by fellow Republicans and even jumpstarted a campaign by her lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, to unseat veteran Rep. Don Young of Alaska in the Republican primary held this past Tuesday. The winner has yet to be declared in that contest, as Mr. Young currently leads by less than 200 votes and a recount seems likely.

Gov. Palin has shown similar fearlessness in going after Big Oil, whose money has long dominated the state. She appears, for example, to have forced Alaska's dominant oil producers, ConocoPhillips and BP PLC, to finally get serious about a natural-gas pipeline -- without making any tax or royalty concessions.

"People see her as the symbol of purity in an atmosphere of corruption," says Anchorage pollster Marc Hellenthal. "She's more like Saint Sarah."

In the process, Gov. Palin -- a mother of five who is formerly the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 8,500) and winner of the Miss Wasilla pageant -- is gaining attention in the lower 48 states too. She has been featured in a photo spread in Vogue. Although Alaska only has about 700,000 residents, the state has outsized strategic importance because it contains some of the richest mineral resources in the world, including some of the largest known oil reserves in the U.S.

Gov. Palin emerged earlier this year as an energy advisor to Sen. McCain, saying she has spoken with the Arizona senator about the need to drill more in places like Alaska.

But Gov. Palin has not been completely free of controversy as governor. A flap blew up after she fired Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, and he said afterwards that Gov. Palin and her husband had pressured him to remove a state trooper who was a former brother-in-law she and her family had feuded with. Gov. Palin denies that, saying she removed the commissioner she appointed 18 months ago because she wants "a new direction," and offered him a job as liquor board director which he turned down. She adds she welcomes the prospect of an investigation into the affair being called for by some legislators in the Juneau statehouse.

"This is going to show people just how vindictive and obsessed the Palins were with this guy," says Andrew Halcro, a rental-car executive in Anchorage and fellow Republican who ran against her in the 2006 gubernatorial contest. "It's not going to be pretty."

Many of Gov. Palin's supporters dismiss the trooper matter as trouble being stirred up by her enemies. "Many of those who had been in positions of power and authority have been very envious over the past year and a half with Gov. Palin's great popularity," says David Carey, mayor of Soldotna, Alaska.

A native of Idaho who grew up in Alaska hunting and fishing, Gov. Palin gained a reputation for political purity early on. In 2004, she resigned as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission over ethical grounds. Among her concerns: That Mr. Murkowski had appointed Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, to a seat on her commission while Mr. Ruedrich got to keep his partisan post. Mr. Ruedrich ended up resigning from the body after Gov. Palin, among others, disclosed he was conducting Republican business in his state job. Mr. Ruedrich said he had, and agreed to pay a $12,000 state fine.

"Someone has to take a stand and change some things," Gov. Palin said in an interview in June in her office in downtown Anchorage, which is adorned with Alaskan knick knacks including the skin of a brown bear killer by her father.

In 2006, when she was running to unseat Mr. Murkowski, Gov. Palin says she got a call from Ben Stevens, then president of the Republican-run Alaska Senate and son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, the powerful Alaska Republican. "He told me, 'You're not just running against Murkowski. You're running against me, my dad, the whole state Republican party'," Gov. Palin says.

The younger Mr. Stevens did not return calls for comment. He opted not to seek re-election after his was one of six legislative offices raided by federal agents in 2006. Four other state legislators have been sent to prison or are awaiting prosecution in the case, which has focused on bribery and other influence by oilfield contractor VECO Corp., whose chairman and a top lieutenant have pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges. Sen. Stevens, who handily won the Republican primary this week to face re-election in November, was indicted in the case and has pleaded not guilty.

In office, Gov. Palin -- whose husband, Todd, works as an oilfield worker and fisherman -- has set an earthier style than her predecessors. For one thing, she sold the private jet Mr. Murkowski used to get around Alaska, relying instead on commercial airlines and her family's Jetta and a state-issued black Suburban. "I love to drive," she says. She also waved off a security escort, driving herself to and from work every day from the Anchorage suburb of Wasilla, about 45 miles away.

That penchant for independence has occasionally caused some complications, though. In early July, for example, she escaped serious injury when her Suburban was rear-ended in a fender bender on her way to the office. And on June 18, she blamed her half-hour delay in arriving to a bill signing ceremony in Kenai on road construction. "Todd kept reminding me to bite my tongue, saying 'Good roads are comin'!, Good roads are comin'!," Gov. Palin said to laughter from a small crowd in a converted fish cannery, where she signed a tourism marketing bill.

Gov. Palin said in an interview afterwards that she ducked down to keep state troopers from seeing her as the family negotiated road construction on the 160-mile drive from Anchorage to Kenai. "I knew they would wave me through," says Gov. Palin, sipping a Diet Pepsi in the booth of a restaurant in the cannery as her husband -- a four-time winner of Alaska's Iron Dog snowmachine race -- held their baby, Trig.

One of the governor's top priorities has been getting a natural-gas pipeline built from Alaska's vast North Slope oilfields. With Prudhoe Bay and other fields being steadily depleted, state officials have long pegged their economic future on a pipeline to transfer the huge amounts of natural gas on the North Slope to the rest of the U.S.

But she took the bidding process outside the state, rather than continue negotiating primarily with Alaska's existing oil producers as her predecessor had done. In a snub to the oil majors, she has proposed TransCanada Corp., a Calgary-based energy company, be given the primary contract to lead the $30 billion job along with $500 million in matching grants. The state legislature is now meeting in special session to consider the TransCanada deal.

BP and ConocoPhillips, meanwhile, have come up with their own proposal to build a gas pipeline. Gov. Palin says she has privately assured oil executives there will be more than enough business for everyone, and outside observers give her credit for getting the ball rolling after years of inertia. "She has created momentum every step of the way," says Drue Pearce, head of the Office of Federal Coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects.

Jim Bowles, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, said his company and BP are moving forward with a project that they believe will help achieve the governor's goal of getting a pipeline built.

Gov. Palin has raised eyebrows in other ways. Many environmentalists are livid, for example, over her support of aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska --despite ballot measures in the state in which voters twice since 1996 have voted to end the practice. "So far, people have been forgiving of her, but I don't know how long that can last," says Tom Banks, Alaska representative for Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington-based environmental group.

The governor says she is pro environment and has defended the aerial shooting as necessary to build up moose and caribou herds in parts of Alaska to help improve local food supplies.

And Gov. Palin's judgment was called into question by some in the Alaskan medical community when she opted to board a jet from Dallas last May while about to deliver a child. Gov. Palin, who was eight months pregnant, says she felt a few contractions shortly before she was to give a keynote speech to an energy summit of governors in Dallas. But she says she went ahead with it after her doctor in Alaska advised her to put her feet up to rest. "I was not going to miss that speech," she says.

She rushed so quickly from the podium afterwards that Texas Gov. Rick Perry nervously asked if she was about to deliver the baby then. She made it to the airport, and gave birth hours after landing in Anchorage to Trig, who is diagnosed with Downs Syndrome. "Maybe they shouldn't have let me fly, but I wasn't showing much so they didn't know," she says.

None of this has put much of a dent in her popularity among most Alaskans, though. Striding out of her downtown office with just a press aide and reporter in tow one June afternoon, a woman passing by pointed her finger at the distinctive-looking governor and said, "Are you...? Oh my God! I like you, although I don't always agree with you."

Source: McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin As Presidential Running Mate - WSJ.com

[LOOON]

I love his choice!!

[Wobbly Goblin]

I honestly don't know what I think just yet. I certainly don't have anything again Sarah Palin and I've always liked John McCain. It's also clear to me why he picked her, but I think Barack Obama had a lot of good things to say last night. At this point I'm just going to have to wait and see how it all plays out before making my final decision.

[LOOON]

Her speech was great

[Wobbly Goblin]

Originally Posted by LOOON

Her speech was great

Yes...very impressive!

[LOOON]

The teleprompter was screwed up, so her speech was totally off the cuff.

[Mutiny]

How did Tina Fey get in this thread?

[LOOON]

Originally Posted by Mutiny

How did Tina Fey get in this thread?