Kristol Blue Desperation

Bill Kristol gives me a cameo role in his NY Times column today:

Time's Joe Klein remarked disapprovingly that McCain didn't know Palin well and had never worked with her. He noted by contrast “that when Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who had worked with Ferraro, was not only vouching for her, but raving about her.”

My point, obviously, was about McCain's hasty and imprudent selection process, not the quality of the pick. To make this perfectly clear I probably should have said, "Even the disastrous and embarrassing Mondale pick of Geraldine Ferraro was better vetted and more well known than Palin..."

The other somewhat bizarre point Kristol makes is that Palin proved her maverick chops by going up against the oil companies to pass a windfall profits tax. Now, Bill may well be in favor of higher taxes--he is smart enough to think issues through and not always come to a reflexive conservative conclusion--but most Republicans, including John McCain, sure aren't. If Sarah Palin's higher taxes on the oilogarchs were a good thing, then Barack Obama's must be, too.