Last night I had a dream that John McCain was the head of the New York Philharmonic and picked Sarah Palin to be his first violin without hearing her play. I know it's a laughable comparison, and probably a specious one at that but it stuck with my long enough for me to want to mention it again. It is unfair in a sense because it's not as if Palin's never been a leader, and so McCain presumably had some measure of her abilities before choosing her. But I also think it holds this kernel of truth in that a position of first chair in any instrument at the New York Philharmonic is important, and if the conductor just picked some random person who may or may not be talented from a large pool of applicants based on one hearing and his intuition, then people would be in an uproar, and that's just a symphony orchestra.
I think the important thing here is something I heard Paul Begala say. McCain made a decision with his "gut" and holds that up as the sign of a maverick, but we've had eight years of leadership by the gut, and not a whole hell of a lot of thinking, and it's gotten us nowhere. I don't think that that's going to change just because of the guy at the top. Furthermore, if this is the type of thinking that McCain puts into a position like this, what kind of research and thinking will he put into other key areas? I firmly believe that instinct and intuition are a key component of intelligence, and we need to be able to heed them, but they're not the only component of intelligence.
McCain is speaking and acting like a man who's only working off his gut. And that's a dangerous think for a leader of a nation as big as ours.
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