Reply To: Political Statements
No chance of Palin dropping out. Here’s why — on PBS’s coverage last night of the convention (the absolutely best coverage of events like these, with good analysis and very little talking-head bullshit), their presidential historians (did I mention how great the PBS coverage is?) were saying that what killed McGovern back in 1972 wasn’t the fact that he picked Thomas Eagleton for VP, a guy who had a history of mental illness that McGovern didn’t know about (the lesson that’s been learned from that — vet your VPs), but that McGovern kicked him off the ticket after a couple of weeks, making him look weak and vacillating. That’s not to say that McGovern would have been able to beat Nixon in either case, but the historians said that getting rid of Eagleton was probably more damaging than if he’d been left on the ticket. Also, everyone hated Dan Quayle, but Poppy Bush had learned the lesson of Thomas Eagleton, didn’t kick Quayle off the ticket, and ended up winning. The takeaway — pretend like your choice was the right one, regardless of how wrong it was.
Of course, I also said there was no chance of Biden being Obama’s VP pick either, so take this with as much salt as you like. 🙂