The Blog @ Spolitics

Wait…Gambling On Your VP Pick Is Bad Now?

I’ve been so busy watching the media trying to paint McCain as a reckless gambler for picking Sarah Palin to be his VP, I nearly forgot that just a day before the Palin announcement, gambling on your VP pick was supposed to be a good thing. Let’s revisit this love letter to Barack Obama written by Time’s Mark Halperin:

But if the event has turned out to involve big risks, well, Obama likes big risks. This is a man who, with the cameras rolling in Afghanistan, elected to fire a basketball from 3-point range rather than move in for a layup. Who chose as his running mate Senator Joseph Biden, a verbal thrill ride who might say anything at any moment and very frequently does. Who — and this is the biggie — decided with just a couple of years in the Senate under his belt to take on the Clinton machine in a battle for control of the Democratic Party. What’s one more gamble?

So picking a known “verbal thrill ride” to be your Veep is a show of guts, while picking someone the press doesn’t know is poor judgment? What a difference a political party makes.