[McGovern] got the 1972 Democratic nomination in Miami.
McGovern seemed to be a lock, for a week or so, until July 13 when he started to stumble. The biggest thing that went wrong: His choice of Thomas Eagleton for the vice presidency. Eagleton, it turned out, had been hospitalized for depression and treated with electroshock therapy.
Eagleton was the peace offering to the establishment that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen. Hunter turned on McGovern, calling him a compromiser and a sell-out.
Finally, Eagleton stepped aside. It made McGovern look like a waffler. The campaign never recovered. McGovern complains that the press over-focused on his mishandling of Eagleton rather than the issues of the day like the war and Watergate.
In the film, McGovern gives a rather lame excuse for choosing and sticking by Eagleton. Gary Hart has a better explanation, but in essence, it's that politics is about compromise and it's unrealistic to expect anything else.
Hunter lost his appetite for writing about the election. He wrote that on election day, he'd get out of bed and go to the polling place and vote for McGovern but then he'd go right back home and go to bed and watch tv. And of course, Nixon won by a landslide.
John McCain picked Sarah Palin to get the enthusiastic support of the evangelical, radical right. He didn't think it would matter that she has no national experience because he perceived he could argue Obama didn't either.
A big miscalculation. Obama presented himself for 17 months to the American people, they heard him debate more than a dozen times, they made their own decision that he was ready for the job and the Democrats voted him their nominee.
Obama wasn't unilaterally appointed by a party's nominee in a transparent play for the evangelical and female vote. As if Sarah Palin could fill Hillary Clinton's shoes by virtue of her gender. As if women wouldn't see that Sarah Palin is the antithesis of Hillary Clinton on issues. As if anything would evoke Palin's lack of qualifications more than to compare them to Hillary's.
John McCain went for a twofer because his campaign was in trouble. He had failed to excite his base with only 60 days to go. He took a risky shortcut to try to catch up, trying to get two birds with one stone. It's backfiring big-time.
Every tv anchor tonight is asking his surrogates what makes Palin qualified. It's the story with the longest legs. Not one of them has anything but a laughable answer. All they can cite is her 1 1/2 years as Governor and her position as chief of the Alaska National Guard. Then they say she's as experienced as Obama. The Democratic pundits on tv are making mincemeat of that argument.
Voters now know Obama. They vetted him during the course of the campaign. 18 million Democrats voted he was their choice. Voters don't know Palin from Adam. What they do know: She's under investigation in Alaska and she's got no relevant experience. And that only now, after selecting her, is McCain sending his team to Alaska to fully vet her.
Voters are left with only two conclusions: Either McCain didn't vet Palin which is shockingly, near-criminally negligent or he did vet Palin and still picked her, which has got to be the most desperate, jaw-droppingly reckless political move in decades.
Sarah Palin is not ready for prime-time or the Vice-Presidency, let alone to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office. As I also wrote the day her selection was announced, "I think she will crash and burn faster than any national candidate in recent memory."
Obama doesn't have to say a thing. The media and public will do it for him.
As I'm typing this, Obama is being interviewed by Anderson Cooper about Gustav. Anderson's last question was how he would answer those who say that Gov. Palin, as mayor of a small town and Gov. of Alaska, has more experience than he does. He didn't miss a beat. He smiled and said Palin's town of Wasilia, Alaska had 50 employees. His campaign has 2500. The town's budget is about $12 million a year. His budget is 3 times that per month. He cited the legislation he's passed on emergency management post-Katrina and that many recommendations he made were adopted and are being put in place as we speak.
The media is now en route to Alaska to do its own investigation.
Let's have a pool: What day does she drop out? The winner gets a TalkLeft 4th Amendment tote bag.
(Zero tolerance policy against references to her family and children is still in effect.)
(Comments over 200, thread closed.)
