Editorial failed to question Palin pick

You published an editorial praising the McCain campaign's decision to put Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket (McCain choice of Palin brings St. Paul to life, Aug. 31).

It would be hard to find a better example of the horse-race myopia that afflicts so much political commentary these days.

The editorial contained almost no substantial information about Palin. You wrote that she defeated an incumbent governor and was pro-gun and pro-life (which for a Republican is like saying that she loves her mother).

But, no matter, you didn't approve of Palin primarily on substantial grounds. You approved because she might help the McCain campaign win the news cycle this week.

You wrote the decision was "strategically sound" because it muted the coverage of Obama's convention speech and might generate a larger TV audience for the Republican convention in St. Paul.

Do you not realize this is madness? You have elevated short-term political maneuvering over the question of how - and how well - a potential president would lead.

Look at the international storm clouds waiting for Palin should she have to take over as commander in chief: two wars in the Middle East, an authoritarian Russia, an economically surging China, a strengthened Iran with nuclear ambitions, a still-pathological North Korea.

This is the world that a President Palin would have to grapple with.

Your editorial board, however, is blithely unconcerned with how a former small-town mayor would manage this.

Not that anyone could know. As New Republic editor Peter Scoblic has pointed out, not only does Palin have zero foreign-policy experience, she hasn't even articulated a foreign-policy worldview.

She endorsed Pat Buchanan's candidacy in 2000. Does this mean that she shares his extreme isolationist views? We don't know, because she hasn't written a word about foreign policy.

Tim Crimmins

Chicago