Sarah Palin

Dear Critics of John McCain,

You don't understand what "rolling the dice" means, do you?

When John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his vice president, he was roundly criticized. She's too much of an unknown! Did they even vet her? And of course these were valid concerns, but if the question is, Did John McCain make the right choice in picking Sarah Palin? The answer is, Yes, he absolutely did.

Humans who suffer from severe cases of hindsight bias will posit this scenario: what if he had picked Mitt Romney? Then, when the economy collapsed, Mitt would have been there. And as a rich, successful businessman, he knows a lot about the economy. First off, this hypothetical dismisses the economic backbone of the Romney campaign: Four more years of George Bush policies. Assuming he could distance himself from that motto, would he have had any interesting policy ideas or rhetoric? And even if he did, would the McCain-Romney ticket have been so far behind in the polls it would have been impossible to catch up? Impossible to say...unless you grew up in an America where McCain did pick Romney. In that case, you would know.

But I'm not here to talk about what might have been. I'm here to talk about Sarah Palin. And rolling the dice. Unless you have an illness, you only roll the dice - or gamble - in a political campaign because if you didn't you would certainly lose. Therefore, the fact that McCain's gamble didn't win him the election doesn't mean it wasn't a smart move. Most dice rolls lose. But you do it because it gives you a chance to win. And Sarah Palin gave John McCain a chance to win.

Her speech at the Republican convention rallied the base and scared Chicken Little liberals shitless. McCain surged in the polls -- that fact alone means he made the right choice. He needed a surge; he got it. What happened after was just unfortunate and the typical cost of "rolling the dice". It's my personal opinion that it was the Katie Couric interview -- and that alone -- that "tipped"* the American people against Gov. Palin. But who knows?

Bottom line, unless you think the McCain strategists were morons or addicts, they made the right choice. And it was a bold one. But the "kinda like a community organizer except I had actual responsibilities" line hit right to the heart of the weakness of the Obama campaign (what was he doing after college and before law school again? How many years was it?).

In the interests of full disclosure, and to clear my conscience, I want you all to know that McCain did pick Romney when I was a child. They lost in a landslide.

* = See my next post for information about the future demagogic exploits of one Malcolm Gladwell.