Lessons from Wasilla

Now, as next year’s elections come into sight - and as Palin’s own behavior has grown more erratic - McCain’s advisers have been blaming their vice presidential candidate for last year’s electoral misfortunes. But their problem isn’t Palin; it’s the Republican Party’s insistence on the religious litmus test that so alarmed Goldwater.

To be sure, McCain’s decision to choose Palin as his running mate was cynical, and in the end it was politically disastrous. It also offers a clear lesson on what happens when a presidential candidate tries to please one passionate but narrow constituency.

McCain apparently believed that a woman on the ticket would appeal to disaffected Hillary Clinton voters. But he was looking for more than a skirt. He wanted to satisfy religious conservatives, and he deferred to that bloc when he passed over more moderate running mates, such as former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. In doing so, he ended up with a running mate without the experience and temperament to satisfy the broader electorate.

The McCain advisers who sniped anonymously about Palin in a recent Vanity Fair article may feel vindicated, now that she is resigning as governor. What might be her ultimate goal? Will she try for a 2012 presidential run? Or is she merely intent on leveraging her celebrity to make money as an author or talk show host?

The more interesting questions are for McCain. How could a POW who withstood torture at the hands of the enemy fold so completely in the face of mere political pressure? How could he lambaste the leaders of the religious right as “corrupting influences on religion and politics’’ in 2000 and then genuflect before them in 2008, via Palin?

Palin’s struggles are no longer McCain’s problem. But the political dynamics that pushed her onto the Republican ticket ought to worry the entire party.