It’s been clear since “Super Tuesday” primary election day, back in February that Arizona Sen. John McCain was going to be the Republican Presidential nominee. You’d think that in that six and a half month period, he would have had plenty of time to meet and court his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

But no. Sen. McCain had his first and only private conversation with the volatile political neophyte the day before he announced her as his running mate. The day when some someone told him about their arranged, “shotgun wedding.”

When there is no incumbent in a presidential campaign, the first real “executive decision” the candidates make is choosing their running mates. Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) chose veteran senator and foreign policy wonk Joseph Biden (D-Del.), a fellow presidential candidate whom the voters got a chance to inspect over months of campaigning and debate appearances. Joe Biden is a “lunch-pail,” “working class” kind of U.S. Senator who takes the train to and from work every day.

Sen. McCain’s choice, on the other hand, is a loose cannon, who believes that the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a “task from God,” and that the construction of a new Alaska oil pipeline is also “God’s will.” Continue reading →

Republican presidential nominee and Sen. John McCain must have awakened last Thursday morning with the proverbial favorite horse’s head in his bed. That’s when he had his first meeting with his vice presidential selection, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

It’s my guess that Sen. McCain had already decided who his vice presidential running mate was going to be and it was not Gov. Palin, when he got a call from some, someone who told him his plans had been changed for him. He met that evening in a secretly arranged “interview” with Gov. Palin, and the next day announced that she was to be his running mate. Hm-m-m.

In one of the classic “Godfather” movies, there was a scene in which an all powerful mob-boss woke up at his heavily guarded and palatial estate to find the head of his very favorite horse in the bed beside him.

The message: the reluctant Don was not nearly as secure in his leadership as he imagined himself to be, and therefore he had to do something he had vowed not to do. Not only was there an enemy cutthroat among his most trusted aides, the Judas also had access to the Boss’s own boudoir, while he slept. Chilling.

In recent political history, maverick Texas billionaire politician H. Ross Perot had a similar experience during his ill-fated 1992 presidential campaign.

Mr. Perot first promised his supporters that if they got his name on all 50 state ballots he would run an independent presidential campaign. They did, but in mid-July when he was ahead of incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush (the former Director of U.S. Central Intelligence) Mr. Perot mysteriously withdrew from the race, eventually complaining that digitally altered photographs were going to be released, ruining his daughter’s wedding planned for later that year. Hm-m-m.

The problem is not that Mr. McCain made a last minute decision. His problem is that he made a bad, bad choice, at the last minute. Setting aside the drama about the contradictions around “abstinence-only” education advocate Palin’s 17-year-old daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock (my own daughter’s mother had her first child at age 15, and she is a fine person and a great mother and grandmother; and my own father was married to another woman, not my mother, before I was born, until the day he died), setting that aside in the case of Gov. Palin, she is a poor choice to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Continue reading →