What's truly amazing about the soul-searching the GOP is now doing in the wake of its electoral drubbing, is this Hamlet like dithering over whether or not Sarah Palin should now be the de facto leader of the party. I guess I shouldn't be too shocked at how absurd that is. It must be hard to search a soul you don't have.
Think about it. Palin's only on the national stage because a losing candidate picked her. End of story. Are they really going to let Team McCain's knee jerk whim dictate where they now go?
Had McCain not chosen her, Palin would still be an obscure governor known to only the politically nerdy and the most passionate partisans in the Evangelical wing of the party. Oh, sure, her name would pop up from time to time in Time, in some article about "the country's most popular governors" and that would be just about that. (Meanwhile, there are seven people in Alaska. If five of them like you, I guess you have, like, a 70% popularity rating). But McCain jettisoned objectively qualified candidates such as Romney and Ridge - I'm talking skill set, not ideology - and, bowing to pressure from aides who felt the need to throw some red meat to the base and shake up the race, chose the woefully unprepared Palin.
That's the story in a nutshell - a desperate, flailing, erratic candidate makes a knee-jerk decision against his own better instincts. Despite initial enthusiasm, it proves to be catastrophic. The pick is widely considered to have been cynical and, above all, terribly irresponsible, driving away even longtime principled conservative intellectuals. The press, of course, goes nuts for the narrative because the governor and her family seem born to be on reality television. The media can't seem to get enough of this telegenic "hockey mom" and her every syntactically challenged utterance. And that's why she should now be seriously considered as a potential party leader?
Look, it's entirely possible that the GOP needs a "rock star" but lest we forget, Jim Morrison was a rock star and he died obese in a bathtub in Paris, lying in a pool of his own vomit. U2's Bono is a rock star but so is that drummer from Guns 'n Roses who ended up on "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew". It has to be the right kind of rock star (Obama fit that bill for the Democrats quite nicely wouldn't you say?), one with a massively popular agenda to go with the celebrity, and not just a potential train wreck who sucks up media oxygen and draws crowds.
Choosing someone to be your new leader shouldn't come from the political equivalent of drawing straws, which is essentially what McCain did. There was certainly no real thought put into it (other than the most superficially strategic) and nobody but the most Testament-obsessed could claim that she was more qualified to step in as president than any other name on McCain's short list - or even long list. So consider those names. Why isn't Pawlenty the new leader? Or Romney? Or Thune? Or Huckabee? Or Jindal? Well, maybe one will be, dithering be damned.
Regardless, the idea that Palin should stay on the national stage even though she was only brought there in desperation by a candidate nobody could get excited about is beyond asinine. Republicans love to attack McCain for all his myriad mistakes and heresies. So why even consider giving his last major mistake - maybe even his defining one - such a lasting impact on the party? Because if Palin does, God forbid, have some future in national politics, we will all have that fierce ol' independent minded maverick John McCain to blame. And for a guy who used to delight in bucking the far right wing of his party, what a tragic irony that will be.
Allow me finish with a cute but apt little analogy: on August 19th, 1951, Major League Baseball's St. Louis Browns signed a player named Eddie Gaedel. Not unlike Ms. Palin, Eddie was not ready for the big leagues. You see, he was only 3'4" tall. Regardless, he was signed by Browns owner Bill Veeck as a publicity stunt and, also not unlike Ms. Palin, was strictly controlled by his new boss. He was told, in no uncertain terms, to wear the uniform and stand at the plate - but for the love of God, don't swing. Luckily for The Browns, Eddie didn't "go rogue". Although he hinted that he might be tempted to swing at a pitch, he kept the bat on his shoulder, looked at four straight balls, and was issued, as Ms. Palin initially was, a free pass. The die-hard fans, as you might imagine, went wild. But as excited as that walk may have briefly made the crowd, the Tigers kept their focus, Gaedel's base running surrogate was stranded on third, and the Browns still went on to lose that game by a 6-2 landslide. Let history show: the Browns had the temporary, manufactured moment that quickly brought the stadium to its feet; the Tigers just played better baseball and won.
The GOP should take note. Publicity stunts will only get you so far and despite the success of getting him on base, and the deafening cheers that accompanied his 90 foot walk, nobody dared to suggest that Eddie Gaedel was the new future of baseball. In fact, they threw him out.
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