In the wake of the conventions Presidential Politics

The GOP, the incumbent party in the White House and the party with the southern base, has put two Westerners on ticket. Outside of Alaska and Arizona, it is unclear how much difference that will make, but it will have some pull in the purple states of the West, and it will be very popular in the GOP’s western core of Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Democrats would be well advised to avoid the low road of personal attacks on either Senator McCain or Governor Palin. The Palin candidacy does, however, undermine the GOP’s arguments that experience should be the big issue this year and that Republicans make choices based solely on the interests of the country and not on political calculation.

Speaking of experience, we have had many presidents and nominees with less experience than Obama or Palin who have done very well by historical standards. Lincoln is one of my favorites. He served in the Illinois state legislature. He served two years in Congress. That was about it. And he had a gift for words and wrote is own speeches. Imagine that.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has a seemingly impossible task in the campaign:

… to tell people that the country's got to correct the mistakes made by a political party when that's the very party you represent. It's like staging a revolution against yourself -- saying that the Republicans have got to go so the Republicans can move in and clean up the mess.

Leo Brown | September 6, 2008 | Comment on This Post (0 so far) Permalink: In the wake of the conventions Presidential Politics

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