Watching Washington

Palin Questions Recall Quayle Backlash

ST. PAUL, MINN. — The stories that have come out about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska in the days since she became a household name are not enough to spike her candidacy for vice president. At least not yet. Something more damaging may still emerge. More likely, there will be a succession of minor revelations, more disquieting perhaps than disqualifying.

Democrats and others will say it all suggests a pattern of poor judgment on the part of the young governor. More to the ultimate point, they will say it casts doubt on the judgment of presidential nominee John McCain. If he knew all about the potential controversy, as he has said he did, why would he want to risk unwanted revelations during the GOP convention? And conversely, if he did not know, how much else escaped his campaign's attention?

What was the nature of the vetting process for Palin? We are told she submitted to a three-hour interview and answered a questionnaire with 70 questions. We do not know whether these inquiries covered the issues that have since caused heartburn in the campaign, or what sort of information was volunteered by the Palins. You have to wonder whether the scrubbing was the prosecutorial kind that locates land mines — or a less rigorous exercise, restrained by other concerns.

McCain and Co. see it all quite differently, of course. They regard Palin as a natural complement to the presidential nominee, an unbridled kindred spirit. Initial polls show intraparty enthusiasm higher for McCain's choice of Palin than it was for Barack Obama's choice of Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. And the campaign believes that the near-uniform support Palin is receiving among social conservatives — and Republicans generally — will be reflected in the response of the general public.

They may well be right. And if they are, they may get the backlash they would like to see against the media questioning and other probes of Palin now under way. It could start to go that way as the delayed Republican convention here gets going, or after Palin herself gives her speech at midweek. Or it may come in the days and weeks ahead, as the country gets a longer look at Palin and tires of the inquisition.

That's what happened 20 years ago this summer when George H.W. Bush gave the VP nomination to Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana, announcing the choice on the weekend before the convention. Quayle brought good looks and youth to the ticket and reassured social conservatives still uncertain of the elder Bush's commitment to their causes.

At his first news conference, however, Quayle stumbled on the question of his military service. He had been in the Indiana National Guard during the Vietnam War and did not deal well with the implication that he had shirked a more active role in the conflict. When it was learned he had once spoken of "riding it out in the Guard," the sour note threatened to cause greater discord in the campaign.

The pursuit of Quayle on this and other issues (including a golfing weekend he and some colleagues had shared with an attractive female lobbyist) came to a climax on the day he returned to his home state after the convention. A full plane of media had followed him home, trying to run him to ground. When the campaign finally made him available for questions, he was ringed by reporters sitting on risers. The candidate stood at ground level, penned in, very much Daniel in the lion's den.

The onslaught began, the candidate answered with wide-eyed innocence, and the spectacle went on and on. Reaction roared in, heavily weighted against the media. Bush went up in the polls, and the questioning of Quayle petered out. While the derision continued in some quarters throughout the campaign (and beyond), the Bush-Quayle ticket carried 40 states in November 1988.

The scrutiny attending Geraldine Ferraro's candidacy in 1984 was a different story. The initial media reaction to her selection by Democratic nominee Walter Mondale was dominated by delight at the novelty (she was the first woman so chosen). Questions arose about her relative inexperience as a junior member of the U.S. House from New York, and later about her husband's business dealings and associations. Nothing incriminating came out, but the bloom was off the rose. And after a decent performance against George H.W. Bush in that autumn's vice presidential debate, Ferraro had no further effect on the campaign. Incumbent President Ronald Reagan won every state except Mondale's Minnesota.

Ferraro was not able to change the larger dynamic in her year, and Quayle probably did not have an appreciable effect in his. Even the disastrous vice presidential candidacy of Thomas Eagleton, dropped from the ticket in 1972 after his psychiatric history was revealed, did not seal the fate of Democrat George McGovern that fall. McGovern himself and another miserable Democratic convention that year had already done that.

The Palin saga may matter more this year, one way or the other, simply because the presidential race is close and hard to predict.

10:00 PM ET | 09- 2-2008 | permalink

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