McPalin in decline

Sarah Palin became an instant fascination that rejuvenated John McCain and his campaign. But "the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," as the saying goes.

According to polls reported by DailyKos, her approval/disapproval daily tracking polls have gone from +17 net to -4 over the course of a week.

Beginning on Sept 11 with a 52/35 split, it steadily declined each day by about 3 points of favorability to 42/46 on Sept 18. Other polls are less dramatic but still show a steady decline as people get to know more about her.

This has to be bad news for the McPalin campaign, just when they need something to offset the return of the economy as the central issue. McCain is limited to big bluster and rash statements, just when we need -- as the Wall Street Journal so aptly put it -- "a calm and steady leader." They went even further and called his response "un-Presidential."

As a member of the Senate for 22 years, an avowed champion of deregulation, with Phil Gramm as his chief financial adviser, and having said he doesn't understand the economy as well as he should, McCain hasn't got much economic political capital. So all he can do is bluster and try to obscure his positions -- and blame the crisis on Obama. That is so bizaare that it simply boggles the mind how even he can say it with a straight face.

Further, in the New York Times on 9/19, Paul Krugman quoted an article by McCain in the Sept/Oct issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries, in which he champions a market-based reform of health care.

Here's the jewel of a quote:
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done in the last decade in banking, would provide more innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

How would you like to have to defend that statement in the midst of a near collapse of our whole economic system, due in large part to removal of that very kind of regulation he wants to free the health care system from?

I do not believe that Sarah Palin, even if she still had that +17 approval ratio, could save Johnny Mc from himself right now.

Faust had his Gretchen, whose innocent goodness got him into heaven anyway, despite his having sold his soul to the devil.*

But, if I may paraphrase an earlier VP candidate: "Governor, I knew Gretchen. Gretchen was my friend. And, Governor Palin, you are no Gretchen."

Ralph
* (There are many versions of the Faust story, some with different endings. I'm thinking of the one that Mahler used in the text for his 8th symphony.)