McCain’s selection of Palin was certainly a bold and risky move. It will either work wonders or it will very seriously backfire. However, it’s fair to say that, based on what was the then-current trajectory, Obama was quite likely to win the White House in November if McCain did no more than make safe and traditional moves. McCain really needed to put all his chips on the table and go for all-or-nothing. There seems to be no doubt, among liberal and conservative pundits alike, that this is exactly what McCain has done. We’ll just have to see if it works.
Palin, it is true, is inexperienced. She does not have a proven track record, demonstrating that she would be both prepared and competent to handle all of the powers and responsibilities of the head of the Executive Branch and the Commander in Chief of the military, should an elected John McCain die in office. That is not to say that she would not adequately and effectively carry out such duties – she might very well possess immense innate abilty – but it is obviously the wiser and more reliable course of conduct to predict future behavior on the basis of past behavior, and not on mere speculation. Still, for those of us who believe strongly that the taking of innocent life in abortion represents one of the greatest moral crimes of our day, the choice between an inexperienced VP/potential-POTUS candidate and another (also inexperienced) candidate who intends to use his office to expand the abortion right, is no choice at all. The answer is clear: whatever negative consequences could possibly befall the installment of a (potentially) ineffective President, any such incidental injuries are preferrable to what would be the deliberate injuries inflicted by Obama.
The law is vitally concerned not merely with a person’s outward actions, but also the mental state, the mens rea, that accompanies his or her acts. Accidentally kill ten people in a car crash, and possibly suffer no greater punishment than a revoked license. Intentionally kill only a single person, and go to jail for the rest of your life. This makes eminent sense. The body count is in fact not what counts; it is the morality of the actions, the degree to which they represent a depraved heart and an utter contempt for the value of human life. For this reason, I marvel at the reasoning of otherwise pro-life voters who count issues such as the environment and national security to be on par with that of the rights of the unborn and entertain a willingness to vote for a candidate who would support abortion on-demand throughout pregnancy simply because they believe he might possibly chart a safer course in foreign policy.
Let’s suppose an admittedly contrived chain of events happens. Suppose the McCain-Palin ticket wins the election. Suppose further that McCain tragically dies in office; Palin assumes the Presidency under the 25th Amendment; and Palin, as a result of inexperience and poor judgment, embroils the country in an imprudent and unnecessary war that claims the lives of 50,000 Americans. Which is worse, incompetence that incidentally results in 50,000 deaths, or the deliberate taking of countless innocents, voiceless and defenseless to the abortionist’s skillful forceps and scissors? Which represents the greater moral atrocity? Heck, even with such a hypothetical scenario, even going by the numbers without respect to intentionality, a tragic 50,000 lives absolutely pales in comparison to the over 1.3 million lives claimed every year by abortion in this country. Hence, to truly make my point, I’d need to construct an even more extreme (bordering on the absurd) hypothetical. One would have to imagine Palin placing the United States at the mercy of a sadistic superpower that dropped enough nuclear bombs on our soil to kill 1.4 million people, not just once, but year after year, while Palin did nothing to stop the regular, meticulous destruction. It is a shame that one has to concoct such ridiculous, B-movie scripts simply to amass enough hypothetical deaths to rival the very real number of abortion-deaths each year in order to posit the sterile academic question: which is worse?
Well, the criminal law system has always known which is worse, and so do we. Make no mistake about it, Palin, if eventually President of the United States of America, could not bring the abortion death toll down to zero, thus saving 1.3 million lives. But even if she served a full four-year term in office and saved not a single unborn life, she could say one thing that Barack Obama would not be able to say: “I was not complicit.” I know that John McCain will not be a perfect President; I know that it is at least possible that he or Palin could be the economic or international undoing of our great country (although I doubt it very much). But I also know that, regardless of what incidental harms might result from such a vote as mine, I will be able to look in the mirror and say to myself, “I was not complicit.” Will you?
