McCain should say: "I shall go to Alaska! (And I will take along the press!)"

I tend to agree with Hugh Hewitt's characterization of Richard Baehr's opinion piece entitled How McCain Could Win as "best column of the day." In particular, regular readers will recognize some of these same arguments as having previously appeared on this blog, among other places, but Baehr stitches them cogently and concisely (boldface mine):

So who would help the ticket most as a VP selection? One interesting choice would be Alaska's very popular Governor, Sarah Palin. She would be an immediate media sensation and rob the Obama campaign of its monopoly of saturation media infatuation. Given the way the media was perceived to have ganged up on Hillary Clinton, there might be much greater care about avoiding doing it again with Palin. Of course Palin would be challenged for her youth and inexperience in foreign policy matters. But the reality is that Palin, unlike almost all US Senators (including Barack Obama), has actually run something, and with 84% approval for her job as Governor, seems to be running it well. Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton all ran for President directly from service as Governor. Raising the experience issue with Palin would be a risky strategy for the Obama campaign. After all, Palin would only be running for the #2 spot, and Obama, with arguably less of a track record, is running for the top spot. Palin would also be very effective in helping focus the energy issue, and the need to explore and drill for what we have in this country. [Gov. Palin] could take McCain to ANWR and give him reason to shift on that issue.

I want to re-emphasize and expand quite a bit on that last point. (Included is a map, and another picture of the photogenic Gov. Palin.)

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Remember that in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower's entirely successful campaign position on the then-raging Korean War, and indeed on Cold War foreign policy generally, boiled down to one sentence in one famous speech: "I shall go to Korea."

So campaign travel, or even campaign promises to travel, can be awfully important. Now, of course, Sen. McCain has already been to Iraq many times since the 2003 toppling of Saddam's regime. But there's speculation that Barack Obama will use his upcoming trip to Iraq as a basis for pivoting, or at least swiveling somewhat, on his previous hard-line "out of Iraq in 16 months" campaign promises. He'll say that he's returned to the U.S. with a better appreciation for the "situation on the ground" in Iraq, by which he'll really mean he's finally paid attention to experts like Gen. Petraeus (whose presentations and evaluations he's previously scorned when given in their Senate testimony here).

I believe Sen. McCain should likewise travel to Alaska, where he can not only be tutored by experts like Gov. Palin, but he can also assess both the "situation on the ground" and the actual, literal ground.

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Now, I don't know how much time, if any, Sen. McCain has spent in Alaska. Simply getting anywhere there by air from anywhere in the Lower 48 will impress upon the traveler how remote it our 49th state actually is, and how vast. Once across the state line, however, surely he'd want to be hosted by the state's governor, so he and his press entourage should naturally stop in Juneau or Anchorage to pick up Gov. Palin.

To travel from either of those cities to the southern border of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (pictured right: click to enlarge, because the to-scale red rectangle that represents the proposed development area is comparatively tiny), Sen. McCain, Gov. Palin, and the press corps would still have to cross even vaster territory that is still mostly unpopulated and undeveloped. En route, Gov. Palin could help Sen. McCain and the press corps acquire an education about, and overfly examples of, environmentally sensitive energy development already being done in other parts of Alaska. They certainly could see plenty of Alaska's still undeveloped and magnificent natural beauty.

And even after they crossed into ANWR, they'd still have to travel quite a long way to get to the northern coastal areas that are under discussion for potential energy development. And when they finally get there (probably having switched to much smaller aircraft en route), John McCain and the press will have had a first-hand chance to compare those almost lifeless and mosquito-infested mudflats to the rest of the magnificent Alaskan wilderness they'd seen previously.

At that point, Sen. McCain, and perhaps members of the press, may be suddenly struck with an epiphany (as was Jonah Goldberg when he also went there; check out his photos, too): Just because something is "pristine" doesn't mean that it's "precious" or "delicate," and these particular mudflats are neither.

Let Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin then hold a joint, televised press conference — during the Continental 48's prime time, because it will still be nice and bright there in July near the Arctic Circle, with no TV lights needed. Then and there from the ANWR mud flats, let Sen. McCain announce himself as Convert No. 1 in new GOP Vice Presidential Nominee Palin's campaign to explain to Americans how we can choose not be victims in the present-day energy market. Let him promise that among her other roles, she'll be the energy czar in a McCain-Palin Administration.

Then let him sit down, and let Sarah talk.

Let her explain to the public — in the simple, vivid language of a smart, practical hockey-mom turned state governor — how we can help solve our future and our current energy problems by making intelligent, prudent decisions to expand onshore and offshore drilling in and around the U.S., including in Alaska and ANWR. Let her explain how that's only part of the solution; you also have to clear away unnecessary and unreasonable barriers to transportation of existing types of energy, and to encourage research into new types of alternative energy sources so the market can work there too.

Let her explain how, by contrast, the Obama campaign's energy "program," such as it is, is all about victimology. (Obama's energy themes: We're victims of the bad oil companies, who need to be taxed; we're victims of global warming, so we need to cap our lifestyles and tax ourselves more heavily; we were victims of reckless resource exploitation in the past, so we must be frugal victims, falling behind growing economies like China's and India's, as we prohibit even responsible development today.)

Let her explain how, as a life-long hiker, camper, hunter, and fisher in Alaska, she rejects the false choice between being a good steward of the environment and making responsible use of the resources contained in our own vast, rich nation.

And then let the Obama campaign spin in small, sputtering circles, wondering how they lost their mojo and why the number of hyperventilation cases at his rock concerts campaign appearances is dropping so rapidly.