John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for vice president has sent the presidential race into uncharted territory. Her candidacy, a completely unexpected choice nowhere close to the media's radar, has fundamentally changed the dynamic of the race, throwing the news media and the Obama campaign for a loop. And in November, it will come to be seen as either the most brilliant, crazy-like-a-fox moment of the McCain campaign or the wild flailing of a desperate Republican Party.
I can't say for sure, but right now it's looking a lot more like the former than the latter.
Of course, the funny thing is that the three days after McCain announced his choice saw those same awesome-or-terrible extremes play out nationally. They saw the airing of every embarrassing or negative story the Democrats or news networks could dig up about Palin, and a few the McCain campaign knew about and chose to release themselves (Palin's daughter's pregnancy was one the campaign rolled out on its own terms to control the story's landing).
In the wake of this avalanche of negative stories, gleeful Democrats were whispering "Eagleton" to reporters — that is, Sarah Palin would flounder so badly on the national stage that her nomination would have to be withdrawn in the same way that Democratic vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton was taken off the ticket in 1972 after it was revealed that he had undergone electroshock therapy for depression.
Palin's support for the "Bridge to Nowhere," her daughter's pregnancy, her suspicious firing of a state trooper, her vaguely anti-Semitic pastor (if you think cozying up to Jews for Jesus is anti-Semitic) and a thousand and one other scandals — some real, others inflated — seemed likely to swamp coverage of the Alaska governor.
But a funny thing happened: None of it stuck. As I write this, Sarah Palin has revived the Republican base, especially conservative white women, in a way that John McCain and tens of millions of dollars have been unable to do. Anecdotally, Republican state parties in every state in the country are reporting record high numbers of volunteers turning out, donations received and organizers working. The McCain campaign is seeing rallies with crowds of 20,000 people for the first time — nothing special for the Obama team, but a huge change from the snooze-fests that had previously been left in McCain's wake.
The only catch? The huge crowds follow when McCain shows up with his brand-new running mate, not when he's alone.
John McCain may become president, but it will be Sarah Palin who will have won the election for him.
I know a lot of Democrats, seeing Obama's lead in the national polls vanish, are getting nervous. To them I say: Relax. While Palin has boosted energy and enthusiasm among the Republican base, she has not yet proven to be a crowd favorite among independents and is certainly not one among Democrats. It's too early to tell if McCain's jump in the polls is just a regular convention bounce or a real trend.
Palin's sudden leap into the spotlight has given the Republicans a measure of the enthusiasm the Democrats have had all year, but we're entering the phase of the campaign where voters really start to pay attention. There are four nationally televised debates which will provide both sides with a chance to wrest control from one another. In three weeks, Palin's novelty will have worn off and there will be a whole new set of events which everyone will be obsessing over. Myself included.
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Michael Sherry is a senior majoring in political science. He can be reached at Michael.Sherry@tufts.edu.
