An open letter is, of course, the thing you write to someone who’d never read an actual letter if you sent them one, and that’s certainly the case here; as the son of a decorated Navy pilot, I know people whom Sen. McCain considers good friends, but that doesn’t mean he knows me. That said, this is America, so I’m allowed to have opinions anyway, and I have a blog, so I might as well publish them. 🙂 Therefore, here’s what I’d tell Sen. McCain to do if he asked my advice:Name Sarah Palin your running mate. Everyone knew that was coming, of course, since I’ve been beating that drum for a while; I’ve stated my reasons elsewhere and I don’t see any reason to repeat them here.Beginning with Gov. Palin, name your whole team early. Specifically, line up the major Cabinet appointments now, with acceptances, and get those people on the campaign trail. Have your future secretaries of state and defense out across America talking about how you’ll manage foreign policy, and what their part in that (and their approach to it) will be; have your presumptive treasury secretary on the road talking economic policy and solutions to America’s problems, and building trust with voters that the government’s role in the economy will be managed well if you win; put up a well-respected candidate for attorney general and let him calm the waters that were roiled under John Ashworth and Alberto Gonzales. Let them campaign for you by campaigning for their own jobs, making their own cases to the nation for how those jobs should be done.Build a national-unity government. Use the opportunity of picking your senior advisers early to showcase the fact that you, not Barack Obama, are the person in this race who has a history of working effectively across partisan divides. Begin with an intraparty split by choosing Mitt Romney as your intended secretary of the treasury; let him go out there and focus on his economic-policy credentials (thereby shoring up yours) and sell the idea that a McCain presidency will be better for the economy than an Obama presidency.Having done that, work outward: get Sam Nunn to agree to serve as Secretary of Defense, and Joe Lieberman as Secretary of State. Put moderate Democrats, senior statesmen who are foreign-policy realists, in the two main foreign-policy positions in the Cabinet. They’re people you can trust—both their character and their competence—and they’ll highlight the fact that you don’t intend to be the president of (or for) Republicans only. Sen. Obama talks the uniting talk; you can one-up him by walking the walk, in meaningful fashion.If you can find other ways to carry that forward, do so. Bob Casey Jr., for instance, is the son of a pro-life legend in Pennsylvania politics; if he’s still solidly pro-life, offer him a job on the social-policy side, perhaps as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He’s endorsed Obama, so he wouldn’t campaign for you, but he might be willing to accept the offer anyway, if you didn’t ask him to campaign. Fringe benefit there: if you won, Rick Santorum might get his seat back.Tie Sen. Obama so tightly to Nancy Pelosi that he can’t get loose. Right now, he’s trying to win by running to the center, which is what he needs to do; but if he wins, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll govern from the center. In the first place, his slim voting record to this point suggests no such instincts; in the second, all the political forces around him are going to pull him to the left—hard to the left. A veteran politician with a strong centrist track record and base of support might be able to resist those forces and chart his own course; Sen. Obama has neither the experience to know how to do so nor the power base on which to stand, nor for that matter does he have the centrist instincts. I strongly suspect that Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the party’s leaders do not regard Sen. Obama as the leader of their party—he’s too new, too unproven, and he doesn’t have much of a track record with them, either—but rather as its chief PR man, as the guy they intend to use to sell their program. If he wins, it’s more likely to be the Pelosi administration in all but name than a truly independent Obama administration.The key, then, is to make that case. This is Jonah Goldberg’s “pin Obama on the donkey” strategy, but in a more specific form. Make the case to the voters of this country that the person they should be listening to if they want to know what an Obama presidency would look like, in at least its first two years, isn’t Sen. Obama, but Speaker Pelosi, because she’ll be the one calling the shots. Granted, it’s possible he could assert and maintain his independence from the congressional wing of his party—but if he wants to sign any bills, probably not.Remember, this is the 2008 election, not 1976. If you try to run on your biography, you’ll lose. If you try to run on your experience and qualifications, you’ll lose. Yes, you’re far and away the most qualified candidate in this election, but it doesn’t matter. You need to run on vision and foresight, and you need to make that vision clear and compelling. Tie it to your biography, yes—people love stories, if they’re told well and connect with their own lives; tie it to your experience, yes—when you can show that your vision has been right before, as with the surge, it makes your visioncasting more compelling; but it’s your vision for this country that needs to be out front and center, dominating the view. This, really, is where your opponent’s inexperience is relevant: he doesn’t have enough experience for a clear vision, and so his is fuzzy, hazy, long on platitudes (“we are the change we have been waiting for”) and short on concrete details and plans for implementation; as such, whatever he might see in our future, he lacks the ability to get us there.Hire a preacher or two for your speechwriting team. That might sound like I’m bidding for a new job, but I’m not—I like where I am just fine, thanks. I am, however, serious about this. It might be idiosyncratic, but I think you would do well to learn the cadences, and to some extent the rhetoric, of the pulpit in your public speaking. A presidential campaign, honestly, is a much better audition for Orator-in-Chief than it is for Commander-in-Chief, and when it comes to prepared speeches, Sen. Obama has a real edge here—and I’m inclined to believe that he owes a lot of that edge to the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who (regardless of what you think of the content of his message) is a fine, fine preacher. I don’t say that Sen. Obama speaks like a black preacher, because he doesn’t, but twenty years of the cadences and rhythms of that pulpit have soaked into him. I think you’d do well to find some equivalent experience to draw on. To the extent that America is still, as de Tocqueville called us, “a nation with the soul of a church,” we prefer a president with the tongue of a preacher; the presidents we’ve elected without that, at least in recent decades, have had special circumstances in their favor. You don’t.Remember Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not his racism, but his view of tactics: the winner is the one who gets there firstest with the mostest. Fight clean and keep your blows above the belt, but strike first and strike as hard as you can; seize the initiative by all ethical means, and do everything you can to keep it. You have already been defined, and by and large that’s not that bad—except for the “he’s old” thing, which can largely be countered by adding a young, charismatic VP (see heading 1, above); Sen. Obama really hasn’t been, and most folks in the media would like to keep it that way. You need to find a way to define him as what his meager record shows him to be—a hard-left politician and a creation of the liberal Democratic Chicago machine—and to do so in a way that will stick in people’s minds. Tying him to Pelosi is part of that (though it’s also for other purposes), but it’s not enough. Sen. Obama’s great political advantage is that voters can look at him and believe that he will be whatever they want him to be; you need to take that away from him, and make it clear that the emperor does have clothes: standard Democratic Party uniform.That’s just a few thoughts, offered free of charge from someone with no more experience than a couple decades’ deeply-interested observation and study of the American political scene. Sen. McCain, I hope they serve, and I wish you success, confident that whatever happens, you will continue to honor the uniform both you and my father once wore, and the country you both served and continue to serve.Sincerely yours, &etc.

I am, as my wife says, prone to fret; this is because, as she also says, I am my mother’s son. At least I come by it honestly . . .In any case, however much of it is a clear assessment of the circumstances and however much is simply me, I’ve been concerned about the effect the Monegan affair could have on Sarah Palin’s VP chances. It’s not that I thought she was guilty of any significant improper conduct—like Carlos Echevarria, I believe in her; but the whole thing has been generating more than enough smoke to drive John McCain another direction in looking for his running mate, and in the long run, I don’t believe that would be good. Unfortunately, whether or not there’s any real fire to the story, there has been a fair bit of sizzle, and that makes it harder to combat; it’s not enough to make a dry, rational case that Gov. Palin made a reasonable decision to fire Commissioner Walt Monegan, you have to put out the sizzle. If Adam Brickley’s right, though, she may have managed enough to do that: the latest statement from the governor’s office certainly seems to have buried Monegan’s allegations in an avalanche of documented facts. I’m sure this won’t stop her political opponents from trying to use this whole affair to hurt her—that, alas, is politics in this day and age; I’m hopeful, though, that it will be enough to render this a minor or non-story on the national stage, and thus remove the issue as a reason for Sen. McCain not to pick Gov. Palin. No matter how hard the Romneyites try to flog this thing, if it’s a dead moose, it’s a dead moose.The other good news Adam reported is that the Alaska House has passed the governor’s pipeline plan, leaving only Senate approval still ahead. This is one of the things for which I greatly admire Gov. Palin, that she put the welfare of the state of Alaska ahead of the welfare of our oil companies—when they wouldn’t give the state a square deal, she made sure the job went to someone else who would. This is how you build a position that’s for energy exploration without being in the pocket of Big Oil. Bravo, Governor. Bravo.

Chris Cilizza, in the Washington Post, broke down John McCain’s VP options this way:

McCain’s choice is whether to throw a “short pass” or a “Hail Mary.”The short pass candidates are people that McCain is personally close to or would fit an obvious need for him. Choosing a “short pass” candidate would be a signal that McCain believes he can win this race without fundamentally altering its current dynamic. Among the “short pass” names are: Govs. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Charlie Crist of Florida, former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio and South Dakota Sen. John Thune. The “Hail Mary” option would suggest that McCain believes that he has to shake up the race with an entirely unexpected and unorthodox choice that would carry great reward and great risk. It’s the opposite of a safe pick. Among that group: Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Sarah Palin of Alaska.

He then proceeded, for the first time, to list Gov. Palin as one of the top five possibilities as Sen. McCain’s running mate.Here’s my question: where’s the risk? I agree that either Gov. Jindal or Gov. Palin would offer potentially much greater reward than anyone on Cilizza’s “short pass” list; honestly, if you want to find someone you can put in that category who would offer Sen. McCain any significant benefit at all, I think you have to go to SEC Chairman and former California Representative Chris Cox. What I don’t see is what makes either of these governors (and though I clearly prefer Gov. Palin, I do think Gov. Jindal is one of the party’s bright hopes going forward as well) significantly riskier than anyone on that first list, let alone all of them. For my money, the riskiest choice Sen. McCain could make for VP is Mitt Romney—and I say that as someone who previously hoped to see Gov. Romney win the nomination. I think Gov. Romney has an excellent record of accomplishment in the Massachusetts state house and as a businessman, I think he would add enormous financial and administrative acumen to the ticket—and based on his primary performance, I think the Democratic attack machine would slice him to ribbons and make him a drag on the ticket anyway. Gov. Romney would give them a figure they could attack in ways in which they can’t go after Sen. McCain, and those attacks would hurt his campaign badly. Not providing an easy surrogate target should be one of the chief qualifications for McCain’s running mate; on that score, I can’t think of anyone who fills the bill as well as Gov. Palin who also offers as many plusses as she does (plusses which I’ve laid out here, and Carlos Echevarria has listed here).I don’t think Gov. Palin’s a “Hail Mary” (which is a good thing, since I’m pretty sure she’s not Catholic); she’s more in the nature of a perfectly-timed draw play, or perhaps a Patriots go route, Tom Brady to Randy Moss. Something good’s going to happen if that play gets called, and it could be all the way to paydirt.

We know Sarah Palin is interested in being John McCain’s running mate; we know that enthusiasm for that prospect is growing, to the point that even skeptics are taking notice. Gov. Palin’s most eager supporters are urging Sen. McCain to name her his running mate soon, for maximum benefit. I can think of at least two reasons why he hasn’t, however, even if he is in fact leaning that way (as I hope he is).The first is no doubt the charges recently raised by Andrew Halcro that Gov. Palin has abused her office in some unusually inappropriate ways. Given that Halcro is one of the politicians Gov. Palin beat two years ago in winning the governorship, the charges have rather the appearance of sour grapes, but until such time as they’re refuted (as I would hope and tend to expect they will be), obviously, Sen. McCain won’t put her on the ticket. Should she come through these charges unharmed, I would think that would only strengthen her chances.The second, which is more speculative, comes from my father-in-law, a lifelong Michigander who’s been touting Gov. Palin for VP since back when I was still hoping for Condoleeza Rice. He notes that one of the governor’s major accomplishments was the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, and suggests that she probably doesn’t want to leave Juneau until the pipeline contract is done. If that is in fact an issue, I’d be interested to see Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin play it this way. Let Sen. McCain name Gov. Palin his running mate, and let the governor announce that she has a few matters to finish up before she can go on the road. Then go back to Juneau and tell the legislature that if they want to help the Republican candidate win the White House, they’d better get the lead out. I suspect that at that point, they’d be very willing to finish up whatever she wanted done.(Update: now that I’ve finally had the chance to see Adam Brickley’s video responses to Halcro’s charges—plus the additional thoughts in the third comment on that thread, from Dave ll—and to read the documents in the case [see the yellow sidebar on KTVA’s website], it seems clear to me that Gov. Palin’s actions were in no wise inappropriate. There are definite suggestions in other articles KTVA has posted that the governor’s office was at least applying some pressure on Walt Monegan, the former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner, to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten, her sister’s ex-husband; on the evidence, however, a) that pressure seems entirely justified, and b) Monegan’s refusal does not seem to have been the reason for his firing. Instead, this episode seems rather like an attempted political hit on Gov. Palin by a disgruntled political opponent, Andrew Halcro, and the state troopers’ union, which was unhappy at her efforts to streamline the budget and cut waste. Taken all in all, if this reading of the situation bears out, this should only make her a more appealing running mate for Sen. McCain, not less.)