John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, as his running mate makes indelibly clear the Democratic error in not exposing the Republican abuse of power that has flowered since the attacks of 2001. The opportunity for someone as inexperienced and volatile as Palin to exploit these newly assumed powers is all too real. George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney’s quest for the “unitary executive” has lead them to trample on Constitutional protections Richard Nixon only dreamed of violating. And no matter what his claims of being a maverick, McCain has yet to assert that his view of power and how to yield it differs from theirs.

Summarizing reporting by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, and Barton Gellman and Jo Becker of the Washington Post, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote back in the July 9, 2007, New Yorker: “... it is now, so to speak, official: for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John Adams called ‘the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived,’ has been the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign.

Follow up:

He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable ‘war on terror.’

“More than anyone else, including his mentor and departed co-conspirator, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney has been the intellectual author and bureaucratic facilitator of the crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country’s moral and political standing: the casual trashing of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions; the claim of authority to seize suspects, including American citizens, and imprison them indefinitely and incommunicado, with no right to due process of law; the outright encouragement of ‘cruel,’ ‘inhuman,’ and ‘degrading’ treatment of prisoners; the use of undoubted torture, including waterboarding (Cheney: ‘a no-brainer for me’), which for a century the United States had prosecuted as a war crime; and, of course, the bloody, nightmarish Iraq war itself, launched under false pretenses, conducted with stupefying incompetence, and escalated long after public support for it had evaporated, at the cost of scores of thousands of lives, nearly half a trillion dollars, and the crippling of America’s armed forces, which no longer overawe and will take years to rebuild.”

Sarah Palin’s no Dick Cheney, but that’s cold comfort. The two are joined at the hip where it counts: unconditional support of Big Oil, the gun lobby and war in the Middle East. Her handling of personnel matters as mayor of a small Alaska town and as governor demonstrates that she places her personal whims above the performance of government employees, a trait she shares with Cheney. She’s more like George W. Bush in her willingness to use God’s name to defend policies she supports and her refusal to accept any human responsibility for global warming. Like John McCain, she supports “winning” a war she doesn’t seem to understand and fixing an economy she won’t admit is broken.

Those of us who despaired that the Supreme Court gave the election that Al Gore won to George W. Bush were reassured that his lack of intellectual curiosity and real grasp of the issues would be shored up by Cheney’s long Washington experience. Not to worry, Cheney has no presidential ambitions and, besides, he’s got a bad ticker, they whispered. Well, he’s still with us and there’s no doubt he wants to pursue at least one more war. Since the Democratic leadership signed off on $400 million to destabilize Iran and long ago took the threat of impeachment “off the table,” I’m not sure if anything can stop him in his remaining five months in office. Whoever next steps into the Oval Office faces challenges probably not seen since Franklin Roosevelt entered those doors.

John McCain is 72 years old. Unlike his mother, who is 96, he has been mentally and physically abused as a prisoner of war. He has suffered skin cancer, and his father died of a stroke at 70. I don’t know what the odds are for his surviving four years in one of the highest pressured jobs in the world, but they are not reassuring. In the event of his death are we to believe a woman with no Washington or international experience will step effortlessly into the presidency?

And what does McCain’s choice of her signal about his judgment to appoint a cabinet and new Supreme Court justices? George W. Bush tried to assert his independence from Cheney by appointing the poorly equipped Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court. But after her nomination was withdrawn, he returned to Cheney’s list and called up another Federalist pick, Samuel Alito. McCain’s logic is as quixotic as Bush’s. Told that Joe Lieberman would never fly with the Republican right and determined not to chain himself to the ruthless Mitt Romney, he struck out for someone with a snazzy style he didn’t know well.

Community organizing, which Republicans find a laughable waste of time, could make the difference between another close election and a decisive Democratic victory in November. Obama is running the best campaign of any Democratic candidate in my memory. Early on, his supporters took to the internet to raise money. Early on, they reached out to people ordinarily removed from the electoral process. And early on, beginning with the state caucuses, they analyzed the process in order to work it to their advantage. I’m hoping that the campaign has turned its attention now to making sure every vote is counted.

There is still time to register more voters, knock on more doors, make more phone calls, and write more checks and letters to the editor. In other words, keep organizing our communities. What happened in Minneapolis must not distract us.