Frank Rich shows this morning that he understands what the stakes are:
It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.
No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney. . . .
Obama’s one break last week was the McCain camp’s indication that it’s likely to minimize its candidate’s solo appearances by joining him at the hip with Palin. There’s a political price to be paid for this blatant admission that he needs her to draw crowds. McCain’s conspicuous subservience to his younger running mate’s hard-right ideology and his dependence on her electioneering energy raise the question of who has the power in this relationship and who is in charge. A strong and independent woman or the older ward who would be bobbing in a golf cart without her? The more voters see that McCain will be the figurehead for a Palin presidency, the more they are likely to demand stepped-up vetting of the rigidly scripted heir apparent. . . .
This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.
As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.
If I were to publish a lexicon of political phrases, next to "like putting lipstick on a pig," I would insert a picture of Ronald Reagan. He was the ideal GOP candidate because of his actor's charm putting a pretty face on everything that is ugly about the American right. The GOP is a Potemkin Village that presents to the public an "Aw shucks, we're just regular folk" facade which hides behind it a vicious right-wing agenda .
The party thought it had struck gold again with George Bush 2, and he was good enough to give them two terms. Reagan had more charm and was a far more effective communicator than Bush 2, and he had the good luck to have Gorbachev redeem his presidency. Bush was not nearly as effective, because even though he looked the part, he didn't have any real actor's talent. As badly as the media and the country wanted to believe his lies, he simply didn't have the talent that Reagan did for telling them.
McCain doesn't fit the GOP mold at all, even though he has tried in recent months to contort himself to fit into it. His attitude has never been right, and attitude is what passes for substance with this crowd. But with Sarah Palin, it appears that the GOP has again struck gold. She is in the Reagan mold as the perfect Potemkin candidate--no substance, just the right attitude presented in a charming well-scrubbed package covering up something deeply ugly. "Now," the GOP power schemers say to themselves, "if we can just get her and what's-his-name to 270 on November 4th." If they do it, she is the future of the Republican Party and likely our future for the next decade. And that, my friends, is a truly frightening prospect.
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UPDATE: Greenwald spells it out more explicitly:
In general, the White House is now far and away the most powerful branch of our government -- state power is centralized there to an unprecedented degree. The presidency is so powerful that it's almost impossible for a President not to share substantial responsibility with the Vice President. Moreover, if McCain wins, he is quite likely to perceive -- accurately -- that his victory was due in large part to Palin and the enthusiasm she generated. Independently, her immense political popularity among key GOP factions will empower her. The fact that McCain seems completely uninterested in any issues other than fighting and starting wars and his petty fixation on earmarks -- underscored by his acute indifference to domestic policy -- will leave vast areas for her to manage. His advanced age and previous health problems makes it far more likely than usual that the Vice President will become President.
More alarming than the extremism of the positions that she has clearly formed is the fact that, as her startling ignorance of "the Bush Doctrine" reflects, she doesn't seem to have clearly formed positions on very much of anything. She's clearly willing to spout standard right-wing talking points, and perhaps that's all she'll ever end up embracing, but it's one's inability to know any of that, and the McCain campaign's commitment to ensuring that we won't find out between now and November, that makes her potential ascendancy to that office so deeply disturbing.