So much for the Hippocratic principle of vice-presidential selection. The fundamental strategic dilemma the McCain camp has faced since the campaign began is that making safe conservative moves could probably assure them of a narrow defeat, but very likely couldn’t put them over the top, whereas making loose, risky bets would optimize their chances of victory, but would also dramatically increase the odds of a Democratic blowout. As Nate Silver points out, to (grossly) oversimplify the bet on Palin, the stakes, and the odds: if McCain starts (say) 2 points behind Obama, and (say) putting Palin on the ticket creates a 50/50 shot at a 3+ point bump but also a 50/50 shot at a 10+ point shellacking, while a conventional Romney/Pawlenty/et al. pick is 100% to add more than 0 but fewer than 2 points, then picking Palin strictly dominates all of Team Maverick’s other options. Indeed, it might mark the first occasion in anyone’s recollection on which McCain made the move game theory militates for (granted, it’s unlikely that that’s how he reasoned through the pick). So on its face, the Palin selection was a sharp move.

Then again, that conclusion assumes that the only thing that matters to Team McCain is winning the election. And while the Palin pick is a sure signal that the McCain campaign is really desperate to win, it can’t literally be the case that nothing at all matters to them besides winning such that any risk is worth incurring to maximize their winning odds. Here’s why: suppose the Palin pick doesn’t give McCain a 50/50 shot at winning/getting his head handed to him; suppose the odds are more like 25/75. In that event, even though McCain has improved his odds of winning by choosing Palin, he has improved his odds of losing in a landslide three times more than the improvement in his winning prospects. And now consider that the odds of defeat with a conventional pick can’t literally be 100%; external events could still trip up Obama, and even if they didn’t, there would have been at least some chance of the sort of aggressively campaign McCain was running, that had succeeded in making the race a near draw, could have ended victoriously (whether or not a Romney or Pawlenty veep selection contributed anything). What’s more, picking Palin created a new risk of undermining the attack narrative of Obama’s dangerous inexperience that they had been pushing hard and with some success. In other words, looking at the Palin pick in context, it’s not at all clear that it maximizes McCain’s chances of winning, but it is clear that it signficantly raised the chances of his going down like the Hindenburg. Since McCain, Rick Davis, Charlie Black, Horatio Goldfarb et al. are quite prideful men, it’s unlikely that they would be eager to associate their names with a laughingstock. Nobody wants to be either a Republican McGovern or a Republican Susan Estrich.

And then there’s the fact that what game theory calls for on paper is something like putting Palin on the ticket, but not necessarily putting Palin on the ticket. Look at it this way: football teams actually practice hail mary’s and other desperation plays; they don’t just trot them out haphazardly when the circumstances rule out all other options. The McCain campaign failed to do even minimal due diligence in vetting Palin; how else to explain nominating someone who is in the middle of a live corruption and abuse-of-power investigation, who has apparently told some blatant public lies about her role in said scandal, and whose culpability is due to be reported four days before the election. Even putting that aside, just one weekend’s research has turned up a variously embarrassing and cringe-inducing lowlight reel (see here and here for starters; and could someone translate this statement on Iraq into English, please?), as well as flagrant distortions of her actually very disappointing positioning on the bridge to nowhere (she was all for it as long as the federal government rather than Alaska would foot the bill; how mavericky), a pretty poor record of fiscal management, etc. beyond which she appears to have no record of giving even perfunctory thought or attention to issues that don’t center on Alaska. As James Fallows writes, regardless of how smart or quick a study she might be — and for all I know, she’s the smartest and quickest study there is — she doesn’t have nearly enough time to get up to scratch on all the things she might (and indeed, because of her relative inexperience, almost certainly will) be grilled on, hence the probability that she’ll put her foot in her mouth at some point (at least by the vacuous MSM standards of what constitutes an “error”) approaches 1. And compare: Joe Biden is partially inoculated by his long record, whatever other baggage it brings, from the fallout of a bone-headed comment; Barack Obama has had 18 months to establish his cred both to the press and the voting public, and thus has at least some margin for error if he makes a misstatement; Palin, by contrast, has virtually no record to protect her and no time to establish her credibility, hence any perceived misstatement could rebound against her and McCain to disastrous effect.

Are there potential upsides to the Palin pick? Sure. The decisive calculus behind it seems to have been (1) the opportunity that a female veep nominee creates to slice into the Hillary Clinton vote. Beyond that, (2) Palin’s legit working-class background may help McCain guard against the emerging narrative of his obscenely wealthy out-of-touchness (and even if it doesn’t, it won’t augment that narrative the way a Romney selection would have), which in turn threatens to neutralize the anti-elitist attack on Obama the McCain camp has been thumping. Further, (3) picking Palin stood a good chance — and a much better chance than picking anyone else on the list — of breaking up the fawning coverage of Obama’s convention speech. Palin’s outsider status and anti-corruption reputation (4) offered McCain the chance to burnish his maverick credentials and re-establish some of the atmosphere of his 2000 campaign. Palin’s sterling reputation among social conservatives (5) helps McCain solidify his base. And (6) having Palin on the ticket could bait Democrats in general and Joe Biden in particular into saying things about her that provoke a substantial backlash. (7) Palin might benefit from the soft bigotry of low expectations.

But let’s go through the list. (1) was pure conjecture, and false conjecture at that. Some people may be likelier to vote GOP because of Palin’s presence on the ticket; they are not Hillary Clinton supporters (or at least not (sane non-racist) Hillary Clinton supporters for whom voting for Obama remained a live option). There are in fact already some signs that the blatant cynical opportunism of the Palin selection may help solidify Democratic and female support for Obama. (The early returns show Palin helping harden partisan preferences, a trend that would be lethal to McCain’s chances if it isn’t disrupted.) (2) holds up if Palin is compared to Romney, but it’s largely a wash when she is compared to other potential picks. (3) is a good example of the general strategic haplessness of the McCain campaign. They really do seem to think that racking up “wins of the week” from idiots like Mark Halperin translates into being spotted some votes in the electoral college. Convention bounces dissipate on their own. Catalyzing the process doesn’t gain anything; picking a VP nominee to artificially cut into convention coverage is all opportunity cost, no profit. (4) seems offset by Palin’s Alaskan baggage (and for those who don’t think the scandal itself is a big deal, firing a long-established and successful public servant out of some personal animus, let alone knowingly replacing him with someone far less qualified who has a sexual harassment
record, may be petty but it’s far from non-trivial; and indeed — compare to Ted Stevens whose personal corruption was at least largely victimless — Alaskan ethics scandals don’t have much bigger scope than Palin’s scandal). Again, here’s a case where basic due diligence on the pick could have enormously minimized the McCain camp’s risk. (5) No argument there, the base loves it. But the Democratic base hates it, and undecideds are pretty well put off, too. The net effect is hugely negative. (6) We’ll see. (7) We’ll see.

The last two are really flip-sides of the same coin — i.e., using Palin to trick either the opposition into an error or the media into giving her a cushion. In other words, there’s one rationale left standing after applying at little scrutiny: maybe the Democratic response to Palin will somehow backfire, and maybe she’ll seem credible just by avoiding tripping on stage or referring to “Iraq, and, such as”; maybe Joe Biden won’t be able to control himself and will slap her ass instead of shaking her hand at the debate. Given the impressive risk management skills the Obama campaign has demonstrated for a year and a half, the odds are Biden is already being coached to be on his best behavior (hint: attack McCain relentlessly; be courteous to Palin and otherwise pretend McCain’s running mate is George Bush — as the Obama campaign is already doing), likewise for the rest of the official representatives of the campaign. Potential boomeranging attacks on Palin that come from outside the Obama campaign, meanwhile, are just not very likely to do any damage to Obama (though they might do damage to the parties responsible). Remember how much the Swift Boat ads wound up costing the Bush campaign four years ago? No? And even if the expectations are so low that Palin can only exceed them, there’s no net gain there to the McCain camp unless she can actually induce an error from the Democrats. If there are McCain supporters pinning their hopes on the prospects of moveon.org or some Daily Kos diarist handing the presidency to Team Maverick with some ham-fisted attack on Palin, drop a line in the comments and we can discuss the terms of your purchase of a beach-front property in Arizona (a short drive from the McCain family “cabin”!).

Things look even worse for the Palin pick in the full context of the Biden pick on Obama’s side (she would probably have been a far more helpful choice if, say, Tim Kaine had been Obama’s vice-presidential nominee). Undermining the McCain camp’s attack on Obama’s inexperience is the least of the complications she creates. Her presence on the ticket, as well as the careless, haphazard nature of her selection, bring front and center concerns about McCain’s health and the suitability of his temperament for the presidential office, and consequently and worst of all, threaten to completely turn the tables on McCain’s central argument and put the Obama-Biden ticket in position to claim that they are the true steady, safe choice — the clear conservative choice hands down, as some have said. If Obama-Biden represents both a break from the hated Bush administration and safer leadership in troubled times than their opponents, game over; the only remaining question being whether Obama can break 400 electoral votes.

What all this means — and I say this with no disrespect intended towards Gov. Palin, whose fans from before Friday ought to be royally pissed at John McCain for snuffing out a promising national political career in its cradle (but also perhaps reconsidering the extent of Palin’s political talent in light of her acceptance of the offer) — is that adding Palin to the ticket wasn’t a vice-presidential selection, but a vice-presidential ratfuck, and a fairly incompetently executed one at that.

[Disclaimer: Vice-presidential selections have very limited if any direct impact on the outcome of presidential elections; George McGovern was not exactly headed for a neck-and-neck, down-to-the-wire finish in 1972 before the Eagleton nomination imploded. But their indirect impact in terms of reinforcing or disrupting dominant campaign narratives can be considerable, and with the electorate still fairly evenly divided, even marginal effects can be decisive.]

Tags: Election '08, McCain, sarah palin