Senator John McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin was necessary because he had to jump-start his floundering campaign rather than accept a conventional, lackluster running mate. The Alaskan is a risk, and may prove a mistake, but she's gifted, authentic and tough.
Unfortunately, we are now witnessing the hatred that consumes fringe bloggers and their mainstream media enablers. They are obsessively attempting to find something - anything - to humiliate, if not destroy, Gov. Palin. And that goal made her 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy fair game.
It has been an ugly and indecent last 72 hours, and with the media swarming all over the Palin family we will be subjected to more "analysis" about how a 17-year-old who made a mistake can impact the two most powerful offices in the world. How is that good for our country? It's not.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy is irrelevant. It should not diminish Gov. Palin's status as a rising Republican star, and is certainly not an indication of flawed judgment by Sen. McCain. Gov. Palin is guilty of being an ordinary American with a family issue millions of mothers and fathers cope with today.
Parents can impose restraints on teenage girls, but they are not foolproof. Were Gov. and Mr. Palin too trusting or too busy with their careers and neglected their parental duties? Perhaps. It's unflattering, and all too human.
What has been lost in the Minneapolis feeding frenzy is how the Republican Party desperately needs people like Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin to shake things up, as it has become a dysfunctional, pork-barrel party that lost its way and its principles. Our country needs them as well.
Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are both true reformers who have demonstrated determination and independence on issue after issue. In addition, neither has not hesitated to forcefully stand up to entrenched special interests, their opponents and their own party's faltering leadership.
By contrast, Obama has the experience of a yes-man state legislator dutifully obeying his leadership's orders, and casting the cowardly vote of "present" 129 times on dozens of issues in Springfield. If there is one example of Sen. Obama demonstrating his willingness to pursue and achieve the reforms he claims to support as a State Senator or United States Senator, it has yet to be revealed.
Unlike Gov. Palin he's never run anything. Not a state. Not a city. Not even a village. Nor has he accomplished anything that denotes real reform, and his supporters have no answers beyond platitudes when they are asked for examples.
Yes, Sen. Obama is a great communicator - an important talent for a president. But take away the script, he actually does poorly in question-and-answer sessions and debates. He simply is not good on his feet. Unscripted questions are above his pay grade. And his ideas are forty years out of date and bad for the economy and national security. He merely makes them sound more appealing than the Kerrys, Gores and Dukakises.
That the Republican vice presidential nominee has short-term experience is hardly a talking point for the Democrats, and it comes off as deeply hypocritical. In fact, the 44-year-old Palin's career highlights just how flimsy Sen. Obama's credentials are as the man who aspires to lead the free world.
And Gov. Palin's counterpart Biden? Joe Biden has been a major part of the most ruthless partisanship in Washington for the last 20-plus years as the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a party to destroying the reputations of qualified men and women for Federal judgeships. The extreme partisanship Obama claims to want to move on from, Sen. Biden revels in.
For all his purported foreign policy experience, Sen. Biden proposed a "plan" to partition Iraq, comparing it to Bosnia - a colossal error in judgment and since removed from his website. He also, like most Democrats, opposed President Reagan's 1980's military build-up that helped win the Cold War. On the most critical foreign policy issue that consumed America for 50 years, Sen. Biden was on the wrong side.
By choosing Gov. Palin, Sen. McCain showed us he is no different than the man who first ran for president eight years ago. He's been a thorn in the side of President Bush's fecklessness for most of his presidency, and he picked a new generation leader who has been a thorn in the side of Alaska's knuckle-dragging, corrupt old-boy network.
Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are the right man and woman for our times, and that fact will become more evident as we approach Election Day.
