"They didn't let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP"

Now there's leadership for you.

What else did "they" force POWPOW to do?

Well, I'm not sure that Joe Lieberman would have been the electoral draw that Dowd seems to think.  But McCain could certainly have picked a reliably conservative VP that would have appeased the base without making a mockery of the idea of readiness to serve as president.

Actually, for Lieberman alone he would have been at least spared the ignominy of being the only VP candidate to be defeated on both parties ticket. 200 years from now (long after the reasons why) he would have been a laughingstock, now he will simply be a minor footnote.

I was a bit afraid of Pawlenty. At least he is not remotely an idiot, but would have been simply drab. I still think anyone of a number of Repub. women Senators would have been better if McCain had to go the woman route.

I'm pretty sure that McCain knows in his head, too, that he picked somebody unqualified for the presidency to be his potential VP.  Not just his gut.  And that he understood this all along.  

Pawlenty was the one to fear. He's very smart, very good on his feet, and has the oddest way of being very mean in a mild-mannered way. He's not part of Washington, he's young, a family man with an attractive and successful wife, and fully vetted. He ran as Republican in a very liberal state, and won.

I can't imagine why he was overlooked, but fortunately for the Democrats, he was.

I believe Palin has been a surprise to everyone, including Palin. Have you watched her onstage when someone else is talking? She looks scared, exhillarated, more than a little off kilter. She's probably going mad. I expect her to go "Little Miss Sunshine" batshit one of these days.

Acting ordinary 24/7 takes a lot of effort.

This, for me, should be the gist of it for the electorate. In a desperate bid to solidify his base and pander to the XX half of the electorate, McCain put the entire nation at risk by choosing Sarah Palin.

"Country first," indeed.

"Honor," indeed.

Yes, McCain has bragged of being "the biggest deregulator you ever saw." His economic "plans" are disjointed and ad hoc at best. Unlike the thin gruel of the Ayers association, McCain's Keating Five involvement shows that he's been on the wrong side of issues that have tremendous currency. Even now, he continues to repackage the utter failure that is Reagonomics for the electorate. His obstinate subscription to the Bush foreign policy is a huge black eye, and his repeated references to some undefined, mystical "Victory" in Iraq hints at a disturbing Quixotic neurosis. His campaign has been disorganized, flat-footed, tactical (if you'll forgive) rather than strategic, and in some ways more malevant even than the Rove playbook. Last week his campaign had to pull back from incitations to violence.

And the man is fairly starting to dodder.

But forget all that. Palin alone disqualifies McCain, at the most fundamental level, to be Commander in Chief. In a crunch, at a time of crisis, HE PUT HIMSELF AHEAD OF HIS COUNTRY, and showed that he could not be trusted to make decisions for the nation. Not only should he not be President, he should retire from public life altogether, in disgrace.

McCain is a man I once admired. Now I am ashamed of him.

(copied to Talkbackers.)

I can't believe that anyone seriously thought the Republicans - the party of "Bible-believing Christians" - would nominate Lieberman. How delusional.

Pawlenty would have been a good choice in a normal year, but McCain was up against crazy headwinds this year.  He needed to do something dramatic.  I still think Lieberman would have been his best shot, combined with a campaign that focused completely on the centrist middle.  McCain's theme should have been "I'm experienced, I'm non ideological, and I'll work with moderate Democrats to solve problems."

Instead, he went with Palin, who is dramatic in precisely the wrong way.  Oh well, sucks to be him.  That campaign would have been a lie anyway.

Agreed, except for the gut part.  I think he regular knows it -- not gut knows it.

And Lieberman wouldn't have made any difference.  McCain would have become "Johnny One-Note" with everything being about foreign policy.  

The problem with Palin is that she's obviously malleable and can't be as stupid as she's pretending to be. In other words, the McCain campaign wants her to throw nasty barbs at Obama, be an attack dog, and play up the anti-intellectual themes. I suspect that, with proper coaching, she could have been delivered up as a sensible, moderate (reformist, fought her own party, etc.), plainspoken but polite VP. Instead she got off on the wrong foot with a sarcastic acceptance speech, was withheld from the media, and then appeared obstinate and ignorant in interviews. I was inclined to like her on first impression, until she opened her mouth.

In a way, I'm glad we saw this side of her - otherwise it could've been Bush all over again, running as a reasonable moderate than dropping the mask in office (assuming she ever got hold of the reigns of power). But it was definitely a strategic mistake of the McCain campaign to point her in this direction. I don't think she's a loose cannon, I think she does exactly what they want her to do, and that they felt they could shore up the base with her, while McCain ran for the center. But it made the campaign look schizo and stretched it too thin. She was already red meat for the base by being a solid conservative from a rural state - by overplaying her hand, she alienated the independents McCain will need to win.

McCain's selection of Palin, rather than his preferred Lieberman (of whom I am no fan), was in fact a true reflection of his political (and perhaps existential) plight.

The McCain of 2000 could not have been nominated by the Republican party of 2008.

The McCain of 2008, even once assured of the Republican nomination, had neither the leadership nor the authority to run  as a principled pragmatist willing to work across party lines, as a Lieberman VP pick would have exemplified.

McCain will leave this campaign with little sense of integrity and with his reputation in ashes.

The Republican party will reap the ruinous seeds it has sewn, and is destined for a (richly deserved) period in the wilderness.

One can only pray that Obama and the Democrats will muster the intelligence and courage necessary to pick up the pieces and rebuild a broken country.

--The Wise Bard

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