More on Pitney's Palin Prediction

I freely confess to the political equivalent of falling in love with Sarah Palin, the current (and hottest) VP pick of any party ever, and so I'm at the point where I'm justifying writing about her over and over again. Alas, here's some more for Palinmania.

We've already covered Professor Pitney's prescient Palin pick, but here's a great write up of a conversation between Professor Pitney and Kevin Hanley. Hanley serves on the Auburn City Council and as Chief Consultant on health and insurance legislation with the California Legislature, and wrote the following, with my emphasis added.

“Pundit” in Hindu means “learned man.” Every talking head on the cable political shows and three-quarters of newspaper columnists believe the Hindus were spot on. Of course, these are the same guys who predicted last summer that it would be a Hillary Clinton versus Rudy Giuliani contest in the presidential race. And none of them predicted that Senator John McCain would select Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his vice presidential running mate. Remind me never to take a pundit to bet on the horses.

There was one non-pundit who called the shot. During last year’s Christmas holiday, my wife and I had dinner with friends Professor Jack Pitney, of Claremont McKenna College, and his wife Lisa. The dinner conversation naturally drifted to politics and Jack predicted that Governor Palin would be in the running for the “veep” stakes. A few months earlier, in a speech to a business group in Southern California, Jack said that in a Republican party dominated by white male presidential candidates and the issue of corruption in Washington D.C. still hanging on the party, Governor Palin was a clear break with the past. He told the business leaders, “She’s a reformer and someone who could excite the Republican base.”

Senator McCain made a bold choice. Governor Palin has risen rapidly in politics because she has had the courage to take on an entrenched and corrupt Republican political establishment in Alaska. She made the large and influential oil companies in her state follow the law. When she played high school basketball, her nickname was “Sarah Barracuda” because she never gave up. She told an audience of supporters in Dayton, Ohio, “I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy thing. ... A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built.” And because she, as the chief executive of Alaska, has managed a multi-billion dollar budget, it’s clear that she can not only talk about change, but also implement positive change.

It has been entertaining to watch the pundits react to the choice of Governor Palin. Most of them don’t know really what to make of this confident reformer from way up north. And putting on my psychoanalysis hat, I’m guessing that the pundits are a bit miffed that the McCain campaign never leaked that she was even on the “short list” of possible nominees. For hours they droned about how McCain was considering five other candidates for his vice presidential selection. The know-it-alls weren’t given an opportunity to give their on-air “wisdom” about the pluses and minuses of a Governor Palin pick. Their egos have been bruised. So now we listen to commentators talk about how “inexperienced” she is. The problem with this argument is, as Professor Pitney says, “Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden put together.”

Most pundits don’t appreciate the fact that courage is not always a winning strategy in politics. Most politicians rise by accepting the dictates of the local political machine. “To get along, go along,” House Speaker Rayburn used to say.

Pushing reform is the riskier choice. Many people know that John Kennedy wrote (with or without the help of Theodore Sorenson) the book “Profiles in Courage.” In the each chapter, Kennedy writes mini-biographies about politicians who challenged their party on the great issues of the day. Most of the politicians profiled in the book were eventually defeated and retired from politics. That is the hard lesson of that book. But we also know stories in political life, such as the careers of Lincoln and Churchill, when personal courage paid off for the betterment of the public welfare. Only time will tell whether Governor Palin will be successful as Vice President or in other elected offices in enacting far-reaching reform in the treacherous swamp of Washington D.C. politics. But I salute her for getting in the arena and fighting for what she believes is right.