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Comment by EpicEng | Hacker News Reader

This is complete conjecture, so grain of salt and all that, but I'm not so sure it says what you think it does about his judgement. He had run before. Honest campaigns, little to no mud slinging, not what you typically see from politicians. He lost.

He gave in to the RNC advisors and others around him that time around. Palin obviously turned out to be awful (maybe not strong enough a word) and he didn't care for her very much either, but I imagine he just wanted to get into office so that he could institute what he felt were good policies.

I think he was fundamentally a good person and would have been a good leader, though of course we can debate the merits of his policies. Everything being equal, I'll vote for the person I believe has the interests of the populace at heart.

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I remember reading that McCain picked Palin over his handlers’ strong objections. Was it the other way around?

As far as I'm aware, he wanted Lieberman and caved to more conservative members of his party. Wikipedia seems to agree[1]. It does also say that he selected Palin because she appeared to be someone who would bolster his "maverick" image. He later regretted the choice.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_presidential_candidacy_of...

A McCain/Lieberman ticket would have been a dream.

For Obama. A Jewish candidate would have been like Al Smith in 1932. Good luck turning out the base.

Not to mention two old white guys going up against the first black nominee. The fact that Palin was a women likely bolstered the arguments to choose her a great deal.

Obama won in a post 9/11 America while being black and having Hussein as his middle name I don’t think a Jewish VP would’ve been harder to sell even to the Republican base.

There’s a few stories out there. The common thread is that the vetting process wasn’t done and nobody realized what a shitshow Palin was.

Whomever made the decision, it was a rash move that proved that a low caliber, not so smart, but media savvy national candidate could win the support needed to be president. It led to 2016.

His campaign manager picked palin, and later admitted it was a mistake. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.slate.com/news-and-politics...

Having a gun toting female vp on the republican ticket would have been a strategic move had she not been such a dumpster fire, so I see where he was going with it. Unfortunately for America it propelled her into the national spotlight and we were subjected to her idiotic rambling for years.

"Not so smart guy" that somehow reached the peak of 3 major fields, including one where he was grossly outgunned and outfunded. "Low calibre" that's somehow supercharging our economy.

I remember reading an AskReddit thread about "have you ever met Trump, what was he like?", it was nothing but amazing stories about his incredible gifts of memory, his intelligence, and his generosity. This of course was back when Trump was still a Democrat. After becoming a Republican he's suddenly a bumbling senile fool who just stumbled into the Presidency over someone who raised 3x the money and had all the establishment support. An amazing example of the Dunning Kruger effect.

> "Low calibre" that's somehow supercharging our economy.

You might want to take a look at what ”cum hoc ergo propter hoc” means.

> An amazing example of the Dunning Kruger effect.

That’s... not how the Dunning Kruger effect works.

At this point, everyone wants to claim someone else made that decision.

McCain presidential run is a perfect display of one of the weaknesses of the primary system. To win as Republican in the primary you have to appeal to the worse stereotypes of the Republican Party - racist, nationalist, “Christian right” etc. Neither McCain nor Romney ever governed to the far right but they had to pretend like they were to appeal to primary voters.

I’m in no way giving Democrats a pass, they have to appeal to the “tax the rich”, we can give everything to everyone and they stay in the mushy middle not really standing for anything.

I'm not really sure that's a weakness. Sure, you can point to the things that are used which are harmful or hateful, but this is how a party decides it's policy. The idea is that the platform you pick informs the government you create, yes? Sure, you can argue about whether it's "listening" or "pandering," but the whole foundation of representative government is that the officials elected represent the policies the population wants. Then when they're in office, they're forced to compromise with members of other parties representing other peoples. The fact that immutable obstructionism is the political tactic of the day doesn't mean that the core idea is bad.

"People are idiots" is a known fault with democracies, but it's a known fault with all governments or, indeed, all human endeavors.

Not really, Reagan, and the Bushes may have paid lip service to the “moral majority” but they never governed that way. Every modern Republican president supported sensible immigration for instance.

I know it seems like I’m giving Democrats a pass, but living in a southern state, I don’t see Democrats veer to far to the left on the state level. They can’t and still have any chance.

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