Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Sarah Palin for John McCain Losing the 2008 Election

"My friends, what have I done?"

November 4, 2008: History is made when America elects a black man as its President. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee, wins 69.5 million votes. For the moment, this remains the highest popular vote total in the history of American Presidential elections. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, wins 59.9 million votes.

Percentages: Obama 52.9, McCain 45.7. States: Obama 28, McCain 22. Electoral Votes: Obama 365, McCain 173. There were 9 States that George W. Bush had won in 2004 that Obama moved to the Democratic column in 2008: Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

McCain had been hoping that foreign policy, his area of expertise, and particularly the Iraq War, would help him win. It didn't. But the economy, already in recession a year earlier, got worse, and crashed in September.

As Obama kept saying, "John McCain's not a bad guy. He just doesn't get it." He really didn't: As a Navy Admiral's son, a Naval Academy Midshipman, a Naval officer, a Congressman and a Senator, for most of his life, he had had his needs taken care of by the federal government. His longest period of not having that be true was the 5 1/2 years that he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

He had gambled that his amazing life story would be his key to victory. And in a different election -- say, his 1st campaign for President, in 2000, when he lost the Republican nomination to Bush, but could have compared himself very well to Al Gore -- it might have been. Instead, it was the lives of people struggling to pay their expenses, something he never understood, that was the key to his defeat.

McCain, 72, had taken the inexperienced and very flaky 44-year-old Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate, the 2nd woman and the 1st Republican woman nominated for Vice President. She had been Governor of a State huge in area but small in population, and for just a year and a half.

In contrast, Obama, 47, had taken the 66-year-old Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. He was in his 36th year in the Senate, and had previously chaired -- not at the same time, Congressional rules prohibit that -- the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Sarah Palin for John McCain Losing the 2008 Election

5. Sarah Palin. While her flakiness and extremism turned off a lot of moderates, it (and her looks -- she was a former beauty pageant winner) turned on a lot of conservatives (including McCain). We'll never know how many people, who didn't quite trust McCain, she brought back into the fold, but it may have canceled out the people she lost by being, well, Sarah Palin.

"You betcha."

4. Barack Obama. He ran a great campaign. The opposition called him a "narcissist" -- which now seems completely ludicrous, in light of who succeeded him. But he never once said, "I, alone, can fix it." Or, "Nobody does (or knows) (whatever the subject in question is) better than me." Instead, his motto was, "Yes, we can!" We, not I.

3. The Iraq War. The outgoing President, George W. Bush, knew that his father, President George H.W. Bush, had won a war with Iraq in 1991, but ended it when Iraqi troops were kicked out of Kuwait. Bush the father didn't go on to Baghdad to take over the country and occupy it, because, as someone who understood the world, he knew it would "win the war but lose the peace."

Bush the son thought not going on to Baghdad was a big reason why his father lost his bid for re-election in 1992. That had absolutely nothing to do with it: As Bill Clinton's campaign strategist James Carville pointed out, "It's the economy, stupid!"

So Bush the son dragged his war out. He didn't want to win the war; he only wanted to have the war, to use as a club over people's perceived lack of patriotism. And the American people got sick of it, giving the Democrats control of both houses of Congress in 2006.

McCain, to his credit, thought the war should come to an end. But he thought America should end the war by winning it. He didn't say how he would do it, only that he would. The voters wanted to end the war sooner rather than later, and didn't trust McCain to do that. They trusted Obama, who, unlike Hillary, had never supported it. McCain's suggestion that he would attack Iran next further turned voters off. On December 18, 2011, President Obama withdrew the last U.S. combat troops.

McCain counted on Iraq, and foreign policy in general, to be his edge against Obama. But Obama was very knowledgeable on the subject, thought not as experienced in office. And each man had his stance on the issue magnified by his Vice Presidential nominee: Biden had been Chairman on Senate Foreign Relations, and, beyond also being a military hawk, Palin's idea of "foreign policy experience" was that you could see Russia from Alaska.

(On a clear day, from a particular land point, this is true. She never actually said, "I can see Russia from my house!" Yet another thing a politician supposedly said, but actually didn't.)

Palin's foreign policy views did not hurt McCain. They only magnified how much his foreign policy views were already hurting him. She was a symptom, not the disease.

2. The Economy. Already in recession when the calendar year began, it crashed on September 15, and got worse all through September and October. And McCain was the nominee of the incumbent party.

There was no way to defend it: The usual Republican idea of tax cuts had helped to bring the crash on, and the people weren't buying it. They knew that the Republicans, the party of conservative businessmen, couldn't be trusted to fix an economy that was wrecked by conservative businessmen. Like...

1. George W. Bush. He was the reason for Reason Number 3 and Reason Number 2. He, not Palin, and not even McCain himself, was the Republican who caused McCain to lose.

VERDICT: Not Guilty. McCain could have chosen any of several potential Vice Presidents, every bit as conservative as Palin, but with more experience and more gravitas, and it wouldn't have made much difference.

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The moment when Obama crossed the threshold of 270 Electoral Votes, proving that the American people had chosen him, may have been America's greatest moment. It wasn't just what we were turning our backs on, it was what we were accepting: As the man himself put it, "the audacity of hope."

It's been 12 years since Obama was elected President. The changes have been huge. He stabilized the economy. He saved the auto industry. He ended the Iraq War. And, having made finding and killing Osama bin Laden a priority, under his leadership, the CIA found bin Laden, and U.S. Navy's Seal Team Six killed him.

Obama got the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. "Obamacare," passed into law, bringing America closer to full health insurance coverage than ever before. He put Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the U.S. Supreme Court. And, thanks in part to those 2 Justices, not only was Obamacare upheld as constitutional, but same-sex marriage became legal throughout America.

Right-wingers insisted that he was an illegitimate President, because he wasn't born in America. Right before the mission to kill bin Laden, he got the State of Hawaii to release the official version of his birth certificate. He gloated about this at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. In the audience was the leader of the movement to expose Obama as foreign-born, real estate mogul Donald Trump. His movement exposed as bigoted and stupid, Trump was humiliated before the entire country.

Maybe that was Obama's biggest mistake, because Trump was so determined to avenge this humiliation that he ran for President himself. Not in 2012, because he was too much of a coward to run against Obama himself. But in 2016, when his opponent was a woman. Who was still stronger, more experienced, and more successful than he was, and beat him by nearly 3 million votes. But, thanks to Russian operatives, the Electoral College went Trump's way, and he has held the Presidency for nearly 2 years.

Trump wanted the affirmation that came with being the people's choice for President, and the power and the privilege that comes with the office. He didn't want the responsibility of actually having to govern and solve the problems of people who aren't rich, white and male. Instead, he got the worst of both worlds: He knows that the American people rejected him, but he has the responsibility of the job anyway. So he decided that he was going to use the power. And it has been ugly. And it could get uglier.

In 12 years, we have gone from one of the most uplifting moments in American history to a time of great hatred, division and ugliness. Can we change back? As the man himself would say, "Yes we can, yes we can."