Sarah Baxter in Washington (Sunday Times of London)
The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, was facing a backlash from his party last night over the appointment of Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate after it emerged that he had met her only once before offering her the job.
His choice of Palin, a 44-year-old, gun-toting, moose-burger-eating mother-of-five, confirmed his maverick reputation but also caused some leading Republicans to question his judgment.
Shannen Coffin, a former White House counsel to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, said choosing Palin seemed “desperate” and that it would be difficult to attack Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, on the grounds of inexperience. “It is hard to imagine Palin playing the same sort of role that modern vice-presidents like Gore, Bush, Cheney or Mondale played,” he said.
Antiabortion conservative Republicans applauded the choice as daring and modern, but others criticised her lack of foreign policy expertise and inexperience in a national election.
David Frum, President George W Bush’s former speech-writer, warned: “The McCain campaign’s slogan is ‘country first’. If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat from the presidency?”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4641397.ece