A further thought: It seems to me that most of the governors on (what were said to be) both sides’ short lists are no more familiar to the country than Palin. Two weeks ago, how many people knew more about Napolitano, Sebelius, Kaine, Pawlenty, Crist, or Jindal than they did about Palin?

What’s sucking the oxygen from the serious discussion that we’d like to think we’d otherwise be having (JP has a good question how likely that is) is not (or at least not just) that Palin is more unknown than those other VP possibilities, but that she is more interesting.

In any event, get over that anger. If the Feiler Faster hypothesis is correct, there’s a long way to go in this race and time left to hope (but, alas, not expect) that, for once, some politician will credit the voters with a time horizon longer than a year and a half.

Prof. Grimmelmann writes: “He’s served nationally, for longer, and representing more people.”

I generally agree with the point of your post: exposure is important. Nevertheless, I don’t understand why the Palin pick makes you “angry,” or your characterization of this as last-minute and a distraction.

Sure, there has been a media frenzy over every detail of Palin’s life, but it can’t be sustained for the entire time until the election. Also, what exactly is the Palin story distracting us from: whether the Obamas give each other “terrorist fist jabs”; whether McCain made up a story about a Vietnamese guard drawing a cross in the dirt? Surely you don’t think the media would be discussing the nuances of the candidates’ policy positions if only McCain had chosen Romney!

I don’t think that people in the lower 48 just “happen” to be better informed about Obama than Palin. Obama made a deliberate choice several years ago to enter the national stage. Has Palin attempted to enter the debate on national and foreign policy issues before? Has she made attempts to be part of that discussion and was just ignored by the media? It seems to me that she was primarily focused on Alaska politics and has been suddenly thrust onto the national stage. I don’t think that this is the media’s fault. Did she try to be a player on the national level before and was ignored? Or was her focus on Alaska and its concerns?

This doesn’t make her unfit as a candidate, but it is a lot to ask to of people to elect somebody to such an important office who has suddenly been introduced to them in the 11th hour of the election process.

Quite honestly, I find the coverage about the Palin issues — did she want books banned? what was her role in “Troopergate”? etc. — to all be tremendously distracting from the issues in this election. If she were more of a national figure before — like Schwartzenegger or Giuliani or others — we wouldn’t be having these conversations now. We’d hopefully be talking about the issues. That’s why this whole Palin choice has made me so angry — it’s thrown an enormous distraction into the election.

I would hazard a guess that Obama’s understanding of the role of the judiciary is a bit deeper than Palin’s.

I acutally like Gov Palin, like I would like a character in a movie of her life. She really did take on corrupt and entrenched interests, in her own party, and blew open a scandal involving oil companies playing inside-baseball with Alaskan republican politicians, very much against their will.

I could care less about the “bridge to nowhere” silliness. Are we to disqualify, for example, all politicians from North Dakota – which had absolutely crazy political advertisements consisting of the politicians from each party promising that they would be able to bring home the better subsidies? Within her context at the time, Alaska, she was a genuine reformer – it seems absurd to complain that she didn’t commit political suicide by running against support for Alaska from the federal money pot. She simply was not on the national stage where that even made sense in terms of reform (she had no ability or power to actually reform the handouts).

And therein lies the rub, as you point out. A small town reformer who cleaned up state government is admirable… but really, she is just that. Maybe she could be a transformational national leader… but how can we even suppose she will be able to maintain her ‘cleaning up’ on national stage, she simply has not been subject to the pressures and realities of the national stage. So yes, I think she is clearly unprepared (which does not, to me, disqualify the ticket, it is simply reality) for exactly the reasons you mention.

So anyway, I think the candidates’ experiences should not be treated as debating points (e.g., the argument that her inexperience “knocks out” McCain’s experience, or that Obama’s inexperience “knocks out” any concern about Palin’s experience). Instead, let’s have a more fine-grained discussion of their experiences and, more importantly, what those experiences show. Palin is apparently a popular governor with a year plus of success in Alaska. Let’s hear more about that. In other words, let’s give her record — as well as Obama’s, McCain’s, and Biden’s records — more exposure.

By the way, I’m surprised there hasn’t been a “Northern Exposure” joke yet.

There are still things I don’t know about Palin’s or, for that matter, Kaine’s, views on the issues, principally foreign policy, but that may be a function of experience, rather than exposure, as those issues simply aren’t in the portfolio of governors and mayors.

I was intending to take on your argument even assuming the premise. There’s a certain circular feel to it (though I now think it’s not actually circular) and I would also worry that, even with modern communications, it might seem to relegate Alaskans and Hawaiians to a permanent semi-colonial status (if Anchorage had only been an Acela ride away from the Times and the Post, Palin would have gotten much more exposure much earlier). But, on further reflection, you may be right. I’ll mull.

As for the objection that Palin hasn’t been on the national stage for very long, and therefore doesn’t have that type of experience (i.e. press conference experience/interview), I really don’t think that type of experience is very important. If she was the same person in all ways, but had been on Meet the Press 4 times and This Week 2 times over the last 4 years, would that make her oh-so much better? This post indicates it would. That’s very unconvincing. That’s like thinking that going on talk shows helps one rationally reflect on one’s positions and refine them and make them better. Most politicians are proof that that doesn’t happen very much.

the test of republican “intellectuals” will soon be: do you stand up and acknowledge your leaders can make a mistake? or are you sheep who will do whatever the leader says?

Suppose she had been a more visible nationally, like Jeb Bush or Elizabeth Dole. Suppose we had heard a lot about her before. Suppose she had expressed many opinions about national and foreign policy issues, debated them on television and in the national news media, been involved in the national political arena (not necessarily as a member of Congress, but as Giuliani or others have been). Then she wouldn’t be such an unknown or a surprise. Even if she had been a candidate for president in the primaries, there would at least have been some period of time for people to get to know her.

My argument is not about experience. It’s about being known to the country and being a part of the debate over national and foreign policy issues.

As for the suggestion that people may vote for Palin precisely because she is unknown, I can observe the phenomenon but do not understand it. You wouldn’t marry someone that you just met, right? And while you might just as much not want to marry someone that you know very well (familiarity breeding contempt), usually being unfamiliar is a per se disqualification to trusting that person with important decisions that affect your life. Why this reasoning does not apply to national politics is something I have trouble grasping.

Does it surprise you to learn that some of us think that may be the most attractive thing about her?

No, the experience differences are not all that great, especially given that Obama has spent the majority of his time in the Senate campaigning for President, rather than functioning as a Senator. He’s got marginally more total experience, she’s got more executive experience. It’s pretty much a wash, setting aside the partisan motivation for discounting experience in a state you don’t hear about a lot.

I’m not arguing that they have the same experience. True, there are differences in the degree and nature of Obama and Palin’s experience in national/foreign policy issues. But if you step back, I don’t think that the experience differences are incredibly dramatic. So if I concede your point that Obama might have better experience than Palin, it doesn’t strike me as a really dramatic difference.

Regarding your argument that Obama has had to take positions on national and foreign policy issues, this goes to my being-on-the-national-stage-for-a-while argument. We don’t know Palin’s positions on many of the issues in this election. We don’t know where she stands on foreign policy issues. And beyond positions, we don’t know her basic thought processes on these issues. We know quite well how Obama and McCain generally approach these issues.

True, one could call this a matter of “experience.” One could cast the argument as Obama having had more experience thinking and formulating judgments on issues of national and foreign policy. But I believe that it is a different argument from “experience” as I often see it made, which is in terms of credentials. Rather, it is an argument about how well we know and trust their judgment on such issues.

Your comments raise a secondary question. For some reason, Democrats seem hell-bent on history, at the expense of anything else. They want to be the party that brought us our first black president. If Obama is “all that,” think how much better he might be with ten years experience under his belt. Relatively speaking, barely got his learner’s permit. Maybe we should let him drive around the block a few times before we let him out on the freeway.

History is inevitable…why not get it right the first time?

Michael Lee

Your comments raise a secondary question. For some reason, Democrats seem hell-bent on history, at the expense of anything else. They want to be the party that brought us our first black president. If Obama is “all that,” think how much better he might be with ten years experience under his belt. Relatively speaking, barely got his learner’s permit. Maybe we should let him drive around the block a few times before we let him out on the freeway.

History is inevitable anyway…why not get it right the first time?

Michael Lee

As an Obama supporter, you shouldn’t concede the experience issue so quickly. You say “experience isn’t really the issue here,” but Obama has an experience argument to make. Obama has not only had more exposure — he’s had legislative experience (state and federal), and he has experience in the U.S. Senate with foreign policy issues. It’s just not the same as mayor of a small town and (briefly) governor of Alaska. He has had to take positions on national issues — not just as a presidential candidate, but as a senator (and senatorial candidate). I think you slight his experience if you say that he and Palin have the same experience, but he’s had more “vetting.”

The difference in experience is rhetorically visible. Most of the arguments being made on her behalf are transparently ridiculous. Running a campaign isn’t automatically comparable to holding public office, but Obama’s campaign has been so extraordinarily well-run that it’s worth taking into account. The biggest argument against it is simply that managerial experience isn’t much of a predictor of political competence: witness George W. Bush.