Sarah Vowell on VEEPS

Party Guy

By SARAH VOWELL

FORMER Senator Fred Thompson, in his folksy and entertaining speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, described his party’s presidential nominee as such a rule-breaking scamp that for a minute there I thought he was nominating Tom Sawyer for president instead of John McCain. When Mr. Thompson described Senator McCain’s progression from Naval Academy cut-up to war hero, all I could think about was a ne’er-do-well West Point cadet bound for military distinction, Ulysses S. Grant.

In the 1868 presidential election, when the American people voted for Grant, the greatest war hero of the 19th century, they had no inkling they had just chosen one of our worst presidents, a largely clueless chief executive who allowed corruption to flourish in his administration and who offered pretty much zero leadership during the depression known as the Panic of 1873.

I am not merely pointing out that military fortitude does not necessarily lead to presidential wisdom — sometimes it does. The nation’s capital that the Republican Party loathes so much is named after one such gentleman. My point is way more obvious and disquieting. No matter how much we voters know about a candidate, the truth is we never can tell what kind of president he’ll be.

Senator McCain has been both lauded and derided as a “gambler” for choosing the obscure governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate. That’s nothing compared to the sucker bet the American people are forced to make every four years. For instance, who knew that Herbert Hoover, who had been such a heroic do-gooder for the Belgians during their food crisis of 1914, would turn out to be a president blatantly blasé about Americans who were starving during the Great Depression? And what was it like to turn on the radio in Kansas City on Aug. 6, 1945, to hear the news about Hiroshima and realize that the commander in chief who gave the order to unleash the most terrifying weapon in the history of the world was the guy who used to sell you your hats? Follow-up: How did Harry Truman draw on his executive experience as the proprietor of a haberdashery to decide whether to vaporize a town?

One of my biggest fears about the current president back in January 2001 was that he would fail to make good on his campaign promise to eliminate the National Park Service’s $4.9 billion deferred maintenance backlog. Seven years later, the nicest way I can describe how things turned out is that the park service backlog — now around $8 billion, by the way — is no longer one of my top 50 anxieties about the state of the union.

I’m convinced that the immediate mass flip-out over the Palin nomination can’t be entirely explained by sexism, elitism or partisan animosity. It was a symptom of just how much the presidential future is a suspense movie scored by Bernard Herrmann. It’s enough of a nail-biter to throw in with a two-person ticket for four years. So if newscasters don’t even know how to pronounce the vice presidential pick’s name upon announcement, the violins of apprehension start to screech “Psycho” shower-scene loud.

The good news is that Governor Palin has sufficient experience in public life to leave behind enough of a paper trail that we can discern her positions on many of the most important issues of the day. The bad news is that after taking this crash course in where she stands, I know that if she were elected I would be afraid to leave my apartment after sundown.

During a gubernatorial debate in 2006, Governor Palin claimed that if her daughter, then 16, were impregnated as the result of being raped, Ms. Palin would hope that the girl would “choose life,” which is a polite way of saying she would expect a tenth-grader to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

Here’s a not-so-polite fact about the United States: According to Amnesty International, a woman is raped here every six minutes.

Like his running mate, Senator McCain has been a true-blue opponent of abortion rights during his political career. Unlike his running mate, he supports the right to terminate a pregnancy in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. So does President Bush. During a Republican primary debate in 2000, Senator McCain denounced Mr. Bush for being in favor of the exception but not having the guts to push for putting it in writing in the official Republican Party platform that year.

This year, Senator McCain himself didn’t bother to stand up to the right wing of his party to insist that the rape and incest exception be written into the Republican Party platform. Just as he failed to stand up to the right wing of his party in choosing his running mate. His first choice was reported to be Senator Joseph Lieberman, a man who stood up to the Democratic Party to the extent that he isn’t even a Democrat anymore.

Contrary to the convention’s constant McCain-equals-Teddy Roosevelt banter, it is actually Senator Lieberman who bears a closer resemblance to T.R., who became so disgusted with the Republican Party he broke off and formed his own party in 1912.

But Senator Lieberman wasn’t a viable option because he is pro-choice and thus an enemy of the Republican base. Which Senator McCain needs to get elected. Because — news flash — John McCain is a Republican.

Despite his consistent party-line voting record, some independents and Democrats still think of Senator McCain as the most palatable, independent-minded Republican. But this is the sort of empty compliment a friend of mine once compared to being called “the coolest Osmond.”

Senator McCain’s name will not appear on ballots under the category “Maverick.” A vote for him is a vote for the Republican Party, which is to say the people who were standing there on the floor in Minnesota all week long chanting, “Drill, baby, drill,” or rattling maracas to cheer on Mitt Romney as he bragged, “Just like you, there’s never been a day when I was not proud to be an American.” Really? Not even on Abu Ghraib thumbs-up photo day? Or Superdome bedlam day(s)?

Those conventioneers are the party faithful Senator McCain will appoint to run our government. Those are the people who have his ear, the people who chose his running mate, the people who will choose his — or in the event of his demise, Sarah Palin’s — Supreme Court appointments. We let presidents surprise us for only four years a pop. Justices can keep us guessing until they die.