Campaigning vs. Governing

So now we have our full tickets: Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin. And they are very revealing about the nature of this election and the dynamics of the partisan landscape these days.
The most important revelation here further clarifies that Obama is running his campaign in a manner that sets him up to govern effectively, while McCain is simply running to win, governance be damned.

Okay, raise your hand if you'd heard of Sarah Palin before she became the VP nominee. Right. The buzz said Palin was a potentially smart pick because it shored up support for McCain among social conservatives and may be able to pick up some disaffected Hillary supporters because she is a woman. Which may be true. But the fact is, how the hell does she in any way pass the "commander-in-chief" test? This is the person who John McCain wants to take over the country should anything happen to him (he is a health risk after all)?! She is just over a year into her term as governor of a state with fewer people than Fort Worth, TX and a fantasyland welfare system driven by massive oil profits. In terms of governing preparedness and helpfulness to a potential McCain Administration, Sarah Palin is an absolute zero.

Whereas with Joe Biden, Obama has added perhaps the foremost foreign policy expert in Washington to his team. It would be very difficult to say this pair is not capable of handling a crisis of foreign affairs (although Rove & Co will try). Biden is also extremely well respected on Capitol Hill and will help build unlikely alliances to shepherd through his boss's agenda. In short, this is a VP selection that will help with electoral politics, but even more so with effective governance.

This episode is further evidence that Barack Obama is not just trying to get into the Oval Office, but clearly wants to be a highly capable leader once there. We have seen that in the way Obama handled the primary debates, not seeking to sow hatred against fellow Democrats at any point even while his rival chose to take a different path. We have seen that in the ways Obama has handled rolling out his policy platform, refraining from ambitious policy proposals that he does not believe he can deliver. When pressed for specifics, he has stuck to the core aspects of his agenda and refused to pander to the base just to win an election. That is not "running away from his base", it's preparing for honest governance. As for those that say he is not providing specifics, I believe they are either partisan agents aiming to deliberately misinform low-information voters, or being played by those smear merchants.

John McCain, on the other hand, seems not to care all that much about governing; he is attempting to be all things to all people. I can't think of an issue (except arguably Iraq) where he has maintained the same position he held in 2000, when he ran as an actual "maverick". Abortion, tax cuts, immigration, torture, campaign finance....the list goes on and on. Furthermore, he has betrayed over the course of the campaign a fundamental lack of understanding of the key issues facing the nation today. He gets Sunnis and Shiites confused, or confuses them on purpose to make a warmongering talking point possible. He still says "everybody knows" that tax cuts raise revenues. He calls a salary of anything under $5 million "middle class". He has consistently opposed funding health care and body armor for the troops he continues to send into harm's way, supposedly claiming it abandons principles of fiscal responsibility while billions of taxpayer dollars go "missing" in Iraq and not a peep is uttered. He calls his wife a cunt and offers her services for a strip show but thinks feminist women will support him because Barack Obama is....smug? Worst of all, while jumping aboard the mantle of reform, he continues to staff his campaign heavily with corporate lobbying interests and disciples of the vermin that populated the vaunted Bush PR machine.

Talking points aside, it seems McCain really is running to continue the legacy of George W. Bush and the legacy of fundamentalist Republicanism, much to America's detriment. More politics over policy. That, above all, is why we cannot allow him the opportunity to pretend to govern.