The Blame Game

In the aftermath of a presidential election, there's almost always a certain amount of blaming and finger pointing that goes on within the party that comes up short — which tends to be exaggerated, to a certain degree, by the media.

The scapegoat in 2008 appears to be Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

At least, that's the impression one gets from reading Ari Berman's article in The Nation.

"Angry McCain aides, who believe the Alaska governor harmed the GOP ticket, are going to do their best to make sure Palin gets the blame," Berman writes.

"Already," Berman continues, "word is emerging that Palin

• "'didn't know that Africa was a continent rather than a country,' reported Fox News's Carl Cameron, based on conversations with McCain aides;


• "didn't know which countries were in NAFTA and


• "didn't prepare for her disastrous interviews with Katie Couric."

But is that really fair?

Was the election a mandate for Obama? Or was it a repudiation of Palin?

I guess that comes down to whatever the motivation was for each person's vote. People are unique and, therefore, what motivates them to vote one way or another is unique as well.

I have heard some people say that Palin was a factor for them when they voted — that they didn't like her views on issues or they didn't feel she had enough experience. Those are legitimate concerns, ones that voters on the opposite side of the spectrum could (and, in fact, some did) express about Obama.

But I don't think any of the Obama supporters who expressed such concerns about Palin said that they would have voted for McCain if she had not been on the ticket with him.

And I think Berman may be failing to recognize what motivates the McCain staffers who insist on trashing Palin.

While I think it's clear that Palin brought much of the derision on herself, I also think you have to keep in mind the source of the complaints — McCain staffers, who probably would like to work in other political campaigns in the future and would prefer to see someone else take the fall for losing this election — while they remain comfortably above the fray.

One conservative isn't blaming Palin — Ann Coulter.

"Indeed, the only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin," Coulter writes. "He's like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That's why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as 'The One' these days."

It's obvious that there's no love lost between Coulter and McCain. But Coulter makes the same mistake (albeit in reverse) as the Palin bashers. Both give Palin more credit than she deserves.

Palin was elected governor two years ago, and she's never served as much as a single day in Congress. She didn't introduce or help pass any of the legislation that either authorized George W. Bush to give the green light to the invasion of Iraq or led to the economic meltdown.

She is not culpable for any of the problems that are linked to Bush and the Republican Party.

She may have been — and may still be — a supporter of most or all of the policies that were rejected by the voters. But she supported or opposed legislation in the same capacity as anyone else — as a citizen.

I'm not saying that there isn't a cause-and-effect relationship between policies and the results in elections. Clearly, there is.

But is it fair for Republicans to blame Palin for John McCain's defeat? McCain, after all, has been in Congress for more than 20 years. During the campaign, Obama frequently observed that McCain had supported Bush's legislative policies 90% of the time.

When voters elect a president, they focus on the candidate at the top of the ticket — not the running mate. McCain was too closely linked to an administration that the voters judged to be a failure.

Palin didn't bring in the disaffected female voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries. That was the main thing the McCain campaign hoped for.

But, while Palin energized the conservative base of her party, she was unable to attract most centrist and progressive women because they disagreed with her on issues.

I'm inclined to think those voters would have responded in the same way to a male running mate with the same political philosophy as Palin.

Which underscores the real problem that McCain was never able to overcome. He should have been able to count on his conservative base. He should not have felt compelled to appeal to it through his choice of a running mate.

The problems that plagued the Republican Party during the mid-term elections two years ago and again in this year's presidential election simply were not of Palin's making.

This defeat was John McCain's. Palin may have cost the ticket some votes here and there.

But the responsibility for persuading the voters always rests with the presidential nominee.

It is a test of that nominee's leadership. And this was a failure of McCain's leadership.

In all fairness, not everyone is making Palin the GOP's scapegoat. Indeed, a certain segment of the population insists that we haven't seen the last of her, that she will be a candidate for president in 2012.

But Palin insists, in USA Today, that she "cannot even imagine" seeking national office four years from now.

That's OK. Some people are doing the imagining for her.