World - Did Obama err ?

With the McCain-Palin combo fast catching up with the Obama-Biden pair in the opinion polls with just 50 days to go for the US presidential election, the one question being repeatedly asked is whether the Democratic nominee made a strategic error by not choosing as his running mate the woman for whom 18 million people had voted during the party primaries. Just after Obama announced that Biden would be his running mate, the former Republican New York mayor Rudy Giuliani quipped that the Democratic presidential nominee had gone out of his way not to choose Hillary who had given him a tough fight for the nomination. And on September 11, in her first interview with a major TV news-channel, McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin praised Hillary’s “determination, grit and grace” during the primaries, and said, “I think Obama’s regretting not picking her now.” A few days earlier, when told by a voter during a rally that he was the best choice, Biden reacted, “Hillary might’ve been a better pick than me.” Going by the latest public opinion polls, the McCain strategy of tapping into the white working-class vote which saw Hillary winning key states during the primaries appears to be working. McCain’s choice of a woman who graduated from a trade union member to a mayor and then a governor in a few years has not just galvanised the Republican Party base but attracted media attention. According to an index released by the LexisNexis Analytics election dashboard, Palin received nine times the media coverage that Biden did during the first week of September, which also included the four days of the Republican National Convention. CNN.com added, “On Wednesday (September 10), Palin’s staff told the press corps travelling with the governor that her plane had become too heavy and asked for volunteers to fly commercial. There’s plenty of room on Biden’s plane. The bigger story was the new face, Palin, who helped McCain draw crowds.”