"The Palin Effect" by Ross Douthat at NYTimes

The Palin Effect

by Ross Douthat at NYTimes

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/the-palin-effect/

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Sarah Palin may have done wonders for Tina Fey, MSNBC’s ratings and the reality-television industry in general, but she’s made this year’s Republican veepstakes vastly less interesting to handicap. The fear of repeating a Palin-style choice, a gamble that worked out badly for both members of 2008’s Republican ticket, has dramatically shortened the plausible list of Mitt Romney’s running mates.

It is highly unlikely, for instance, that the presumptive Republican nominee will select either of his party’s most promising female officeholders, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, because both have less than two years of political experience in statewide office, and the parallels with the Palin pick would probably dominate the news coverage at the outset.

It’s also unlikely that Romney will go with Marco Rubio of Florida, darling of the right and Great Hispanic Hope though he may be, because of basically similar considerations. Rubio is light on experience and relatively new to the national stage, and even though the various controversies in his past – over his credit card expenditures as a Florida officeholder, over the way his Web site described his parent’s departure from Cuba, over his friendship with a Florida congressman who’s been investigated by the I.R.S. – mostly look like pseudoscandals, there are enough of them to spook a campaign wary of a replay of the McCain campaign’s Troopergate headaches.

The memory of the way Palin’s star tended to eclipse McCain’s even when she wasn’t “going rogue,” meanwhile, has probably reduced Romney’s appetite for picking a mercurial, celebrity-like figure. Hence the long odds against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who might otherwise have been an obvious pick, and the even longer odds against the perpetually underestimated (though not, one assumes, by veterans of Romney’s 2008 campaign) Mike Huckabee, who might otherwise have been an interesting dark horse choice.
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