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Hernando Today

Change Is Relative

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By JOHN HERBERT, From Where I Sit

Hernando Today

Published: September 9, 2008

So much for "change," Sen. Barack Obama's premiere campaign slogan. He's chosen a veteran Washington insider with 36 years in the U.S. Senate as his vice presidential running mate.
Obviously, though, in selecting Sen. Joe Biden, Obama is admitting he needs foreign affairs backup. Biden, of tiny Delaware, has long been on the Senate's foreign affairs committee and is currently its chairman.
Historically, American vice presidents don't play much of a role in White House policy making. Still, it seems to have been a smart move on Sen. John McCain's part to appoint a powerful, talented and reform-minded female as his Republican VP candidate.
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was only 9 years old when Biden was elected to the Senate. Age issues are irrelevant, really. They have been ever since I saw 81-year-old Pope Benedict vigorously take on America earlier this year.
The Dems led off their predictable criticism of the Palin choice by pointing out that her only "real" executive experience was as a small town mayor in the Alaskan sticks. That insult could cost the Dems support in small towns all over America, including Brooksville. The Dems will have to be careful, too, that they don't leave themselves open to charges of beating up on women as they pick away at Palin.
Unless the media or the Dems can pull out a serious skeleton off Palin's gun rack, McCain seems to have pulled off a real coup in naming Palin.
The Alaskan governor didn't even wear a baggy pants suit to the rally where she was introduced as McCain's running mate recently. Sounds like she might be more comfortable in a fur-lined parka, though.
Palin comes with so many positive attributes, McCain would be wise to listen to her advice once the pair takes over Washington. There's a single negative as far as I can see; she might not fly her own plane. An aberration? Just about everyone in suburban Alaska has at least one light plane in the garage.
The Republican VP pick would get my vote, anyway. Not just on her record of anti-pork reforms, but because she plays hockey. We have an unspoken affinity -- my elder daughter, at 47, still plays elite-level hockey in Sweden. While I don't necessarily envision either lady as a thug on skates, I'd hate to confront either of them in a dark alley.
Meanwhile, both parties are more or less raving about Obama's acceptance speech in Denver. Yes, it was quite a show, with lots of fireworks and rock bands and 80,000 hysterical spectators. The marquee speech left too many unanswered questions, though.
Obama was critical of Bush and McCain for not having nabbed Osama bin Laden after seven years of searching the caves along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. What, exactly, does Obama plan to do? Invade Pakistan?
Obama promised to cut taxes for 95 percent of the voters. Pipe dreams. He doesn't even hint at how this would be done. The usual liberal Democratic battle cry is "tax and spend."
Obama's immediate answer to American energy independence is to keep your tires properly inflated; one of McCain's early campaign gimmicks was to hand out tire pressure gauges as the solution to the energy crisis.
Obama wants to talk, unconditionally, with the president of Iran, whatever his name is. But Obama still won't talk to McCain at a series of town meetings the latter has proposed.
Obama continues to boast of his early opposition to the Iraq war, but has never stated, publicly, that his stand was made from the comparative obscurity of the Illinois legislature in 2002, not from the U.S. Senate grandstand.
It'll be a fascinating next two months, no matter whether a Democrat or a Republican winds up in the White House. We'll either have the first African-American president or the first female vice president. History making, no matter what!

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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