Presidential elections in this country are always exciting to me…
Unfortunately, it isn’t really because of the candidates. What’s so compelling are the strategies that each side cooks up to try and get their candidate elected. I am pretty apolitical in my views. I look at issues in isolation – not as a platform. That said, the wonkish side of me loves looking at strategies. There’s a chess like quality to this aspect of campaigns that draws you in.
This election cycle has been extraordinary in this regard. Despite their occasional missteps, both the Obama and McCain camps have demonstrated flashes of brilliance and were able to overcome very long odds. That each was able to secure their party’s nomination is testament to the strength of their respective strategic approaches.
But as strategy goes, McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for VP is a master stroke…
Forget any partisan arguments or policy points. I’m not talking about anything like that. Like I said at the beginning – I’m apolitical. I am looking at this strictly from the cold, calculating, dispassionate framework of the campaign wonks and strategists.
From that perspective, the choice of Palin was clearly designed to fix some things that were obviously broken with the McCain campaign:
- A lack media buzz and attention
- The tepid response from the conservative base
- The dilution of McCain’s “maverick” credentials
- Little appeal to socially conservative Democrats – especially women
But if that were all there was to it, I wouldn’t be that impressed. What makes the Palin choice so interesting – and in some ways brilliant – is her complete lack of experience at the national level.
Uh?
While that may seem non intuitive, it is actually the perfect qualification for the McCain camp’s attempt at changing the debate using Reducio Ad Absurdum.
“Reduction to the absurd”…
The choice of Sarah Palin takes the Obama camp’s argument of “Judgment over Experience” and brings it out to an extreme. By having Republicans of every stripe hit the media circuit to posit that being Governor of Alaska has given Palin the experience necessary to be president, it creates momentum behind a national debate on the issue. It forces people to look again at the judgment/experience question and ask if, in fact, experience should carry more weight in their decision making process.
And that reflection probably won’t just be limited to the choice of Sarah Palin.
Experience is not an issue the Obama camp wants in the daily news cycle…
But by making it an issue – even in this strange sort of way – the McCain camp can operate from a position of strength. If the Obama camp tries to address his experience directly, they get themselves into a debate that they’d rather avoid – it takes them off message and puts them on the defensive. If they decide to ignore it, the media will still focus on it and the McCain camp can shape the issue any way they want. And even for those people who won’t consider the “experience issue” overtly, it will still sit in the back of their minds – saturation coverage by the media does that.
Campaigns are nothing if not unpredictable. David Axelrod, Obama’s top advisor, is probably one of the brightest minds of either party in the political sphere today. He will undoubtedly formulate a worthy response to this move by the McCain camp.
And that’s one of the things that keeps me hooked on politics.
There may be only 60 days left, but this election battle is just getting started…