Palin Fire

THERE was a time not so very long ago-around the last week of August, in fact-when it was possible to imagine that Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, might be one of the least polarizing choices for vice president that John McCain could make.

Here was a politician with the conservative street cred to avoid the sort of intra-party civil war that would have greeted a McCain-Lieberman ticket, but whose ties to Bush Republicanism were weak enough that the media and the Democrats would have a tough time marrying her to the GOP’s unpopular brand. Her chief political enemies were corrupt Alaska Republicans beloved of neither party; she had declined to endorse any candidate in the GOP primary; she had spoken favorably about Barack Obama’s popularity in Alaska during a summer New Yorker interview; her record and signature issues-ethics reform, a natural-gas pipeline-were light-years removed from the debates that consumed the Beltway during the Bush administration. The most controversial aspect of her nomination would be her lack of national-security experience-but this disadvantage would be more conducive to fretful Sunday-talk-show chin-stroking than to media feeding frenzies.

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Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a former National Review contributing editor.

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Sarah Palin

John McCain

THERE was a time not so very long ago-around the last week of August, in fact-when it was possible to imagine that Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, might be one of the least polarizing choices for vice president that John McCain could make.

Here was a politician with the conservative street cred to avoid the sort of intra-party civil war that would have greeted a McCain-Lieberman ticket, but whose ties to Bush Republicanism were weak enough that the media and the Democrats would have a tough time marrying her to the GOP’s unpopular brand. Her chief political enemies were corrupt Alaska Republicans beloved of neither party; she had declined to endorse any candidate in the GOP primary; she had spoken favorably about Barack Obama’s popularity in Alaska during a summer New Yorker interview; her record and signature issues-ethics reform, a natural-gas pipeline-were light-years removed from the debates that consumed the Beltway during the Bush administration. The most controversial aspect of her nomination would be her lack of national-security experience-but this disadvantage would be more conducive to fretful Sunday-talk-show chin-stroking than to media feeding frenzies.