The Veepstakes

Two things have been said about picking a vice presidential candidate, both of which I think are hogwash. One is that the presidential candidate’s first decision tells you quite a lot about their judgment. No, it doesn’t and shouldn’t. It often falls into who the best person is to provide a foil for the better half of the ticket and give some sort of counterbalance by ideology, experience or another variable the consultants deem important. The second is that the wrong pick will doom a candidacy. To that I present you J. Danforth Quayle. If he couldn’t stop the elder Bush from becoming president, no VP candidate can.

When I look at Joe Biden, all I can think of is what a capable Senator he is and the plagiarism charges that squashed his first presidential run in 1988. What made this even wilder is that he then served on the Senate Ethics Committee with Ted Kennedy when he questioned Oliver North. Since then Biden appears to have settled into a solid, if unspectacular, senator whose charisma is so bland it got him nowhere in his presidential run this year. When Hillary Clinton’s supporters talked about how important experience was in their decision, why weren’t they voting for Biden? He had more experience than any other presidential candidate this year. He is a safe and solid, if unspectacular, choice.

Today John McCain made a much riskier choice with the completely unknown Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. The photo above is the downtown area of Wasilla, the town Palin ran as mayor just two years ago. This Alaskan blog has some good stories about Wasilla and Alaskan politics, which don’t appear to be too different from anywhere else. Wasilla has about 6,000 people and appears to be in the heart of Alaska’s Bible Belt (I never even thought about such a place existing). And apparently her husband is the current champion of Alaska’s Iron Dog snowmobiling competition. Now that’s cool.

I always admire gutsy moves like this from candidates, which tend to wildly succeed or spectacularly fail. It’s a bit early to tell at this stage since I know as much about this woman as you do. But my gut feeling is it seems a bit odd. Was this a lame attempt to attract disgruntled Hillary supporters? Wait until they hear Palin’s views on abortion and creationism. Her support for ANWR drilling may also be problematic to women, but not Reagan Democrats and I don’t think you’ll find any politician from Alaska who doesn’t want to drill up there.

McCain did need to do something unique and he’s certainly done it. What will be truly interesting is how the former Wasilla, Alaska mayor will act debating a pro like Biden or when she’s questioned about the wedge issues like Iraq and stem cell research that most people in the lower 48 have very clear ideas on. And the GOP certainly can’t use the inexperience argument any more.

Politics as Usual

Were you excited when John McCain and Barack Obama – two politicians that don’t fit the typical Republican and Democratic mold – became the nominees? Did it excite you that two Senators who often go with their gut and were popular with both the public and the media have an opportunity to become the world’s most powerful person? Did you expect a fresh start and an invigorated campaign that rivaled Lincoln/Douglas or Weld/Kerry here in Massachusetts?

What has struck me so far is just how boring the campaign has been. Everything has been typical so far – negative ads, attacking the other candidate and adherence to general talking points. McCain, who had a reputation as a maverick who bucks the party platform, is now talking in sound bites and endlessly referring to his POW stint – the same way Kerry endlessly referred to his time as a Vietnam veteran. Why on earth are both men trying to convince voters to judge them through those contexts? Is that the criteria in which they’ll make their decisions?

You’d think all Obama would need to do is talk to voters directly and use the same inspirational rhetoric that worked so well for him before, especially now that more Americans are paying attention to this. Nope. He’s too busy retreating into standard candidate mode – attacking without offering alternatives, saying what he’d do without telling people who he is, and making the campaign about himself instead of the voters. This may work for a standard politician, but Obama didn’t gain his success by going the well-traveled route.

My guess is that both candidates are too busy listening to the myriad pollsters, consultants and, worst of all, the party leaders who are giving them conflicting opinions on how to win. This has resulted in a pedestrian race, and I’m unsurprised both men are tied in the polls. They need to shrug off the conventional advice and go with their gut more. They didn’t win the nomination by being ordinary, and it’s a shame that both campaigns are exceedingly vanilla so far.

Keep George Out

This is not a posting about George W. Bush. This is about another George who tried to enforce his will on the world and is unbelievably stubborn in his ways. Another George who made the colossus he ran hated by millions and was summarily punished, and yet there are some people who love this George and say he deserves the highest of honors. By now you’ve guessed it – it’s George Steinbrenner, and I’ve heard some people from Goose Gossage to Tim McCarver calling for Steinbrenner to be enshrined in Baseball’s Hall of Fame.

If this happens, it would be the equivalent of carving George W. Bush’s head on Mt. Rushmore, and baseball will continue slipping into irrelevance and mediocrity. I can’t think of anyone less qualified to represent America’s pastime than Steinbrenner. Since Steinbrenner is now elderly, ailing and appears to have lost most of his marbles, there has been a recent tendency to overlook his decades of mistakes and virulence, and focus on the Yankee dynasties in the 70s and 90s that emerged while he was the team’s de facto owner and overlord. If baseball was like the NFL (where a candidate’s character is irrelevant to on-field performance) this may be valid. But Cooperstown maintains character as a prerequisite, which is why Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds will never enter the hall and why Steinbrenner should be excluded for the rest of his life and beyond.

For baseball and Yankee fans alike with long-term memory issues, here’s a review of Steinbrenner’s “accomplishments” that may have slipped their minds that gives plenty of insight on his character:

· Steinbrenner pled guilty to obstructing justice and making illegal campaign contributions to Nixon in 1974. He was suspended by MLB for 15 months. Ronald Reagan pardoned him in 1988.
· Was banned again for life by Commissioner Fay Vincent for hiring a thug to find dirt on Dave Winfield after Steinbrenner refused to make a charitable donation to Winfield’s charity. The payment was part of a 10-year, $23 million contract Steinbrenner signed that was the highest ever in baseball at the time. When this was announced to the hometown Yankee crowd, they responded with a standing ovation because Steinbrenner was so despised.
· The Yankee dynasty of the 70s was largely due to Steinbrenner’s dexterity in the new free agent era. He became the first to sign top players to huge contracts that teams without the Yankee war chest could never match. While this is now standard practice, it has led to the current overclass and underclass that exists in baseball with the same rich teams and poor teams perennially at the top and bottom of the standings year after year. Changing baseball to an oligarchic practice is one reason it has fallen from America’s top sport to number four in popularity, revenue and TV ratings.
· Much has been written about Steinbrenner’s martinet reputation and the continual and repeated annual firings of managers and general managers if the Yankees did not win a title (and let’s see what happens to Joe Girardi in October). When Steinbrenner finally stopped this practice with Joe Torre and Brian Cashman in the mid-90s, success returned to the ballclub.

You will never find a Yankee fan that disputes the team plays better when Steinbrenner stays out of the way and stops interfering. Is baseball considering putting him in the Hall of Fame because after 20 years he finally learned how to do his job? Is he being rewarded because he is less involved and the team succeeds when he has nothing to do with it? When Steinbrenner was involved in manager selection (Dallas Green, Clyde King, Stump Merill, Bucky Dent) the choices were either disasters or - in the case of Billy Martin and Lou Piniella - Steinbrenner kicked them to the curb if they failed to win the World Series. The players Steinbrenner insisted on getting (Ken Phelps, Ed Whitson, Steve Trout, Rick Rhoden, Dale Murray, Butch Wynegar, Danny Tartabull, Kevin Maas, Steve Howe and I’m forgetting at least 50 others) were either overpaid over the hill or both. Notice a pattern here?

Steinbrenner is not totally without merit. He did make the Yankees winners again in bursts (again, mainly when he was completely UNINVOLVED with baseball) and the Yankees are now worth more than most companies, let alone baseball teams. He did install an attitude of winning in the club, albeit with the subtleness of Mussolini. But forget this ridiculousness about putting him in the same pantheon as honorable men like Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron. If either of them was thrown out of baseball twice and did one-third of the things Steinbrenner did, they wouldn’t be Hall of Famers. Let’s hope voters subject owners to the same character criteria they do with players. If they’re fair, it shouldn’t even be close.