The economic crisis has caused Republicans to reconsider McCain's choice of running mate, writes James Rainey
WHILE JOHN McCain and his aides have railed against the "liberal mainstream media" in recent weeks, some of the most searing attacks against the Republican presidential nominee have come from conservative intellectuals.
McCain's surprise vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin, and sharp reactions to the continuing economic storm have led several prominent columnists on the right to slam the senator from Arizona as more reckless than bold, more strident than forceful.
Those opinion leaders in turn have triggered a backlash from other commentators who have dubbed the critics elitist and have risen to the defence of a woman they see as the Republican Party's new populist star.
The spirited debate may have reached its apogee last week, with George Will issuing McCain a harsh dressing-down.
"Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high," Will began his syndicated column, which is carried in more than 450 newspapers. "It is not Barack Obama."
The conservative elder accused McCain of "characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence", for attacking Obama as a big spender, rather than mounting a philosophical challenge to the largest government bailout of business in American history.
Will mocked the Republican standard-bearer as a veritable Queen of Hearts for demanding the head of Christopher Cox, a former Republican congressman who is the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist argued that such impulsiveness sews doubts about McCain's ability to apply "calm reflection and clear principles" to important decisions.
"It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency," Will wrote.
"It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"
The dismay expressed by Will and other columnists, including sometime McCain cheerleader David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, arises primarily from his selection of Palin, the Alaska governor.
After the 2000 presidential race, Brooks acknowledged that he was even "more worshipful" of McCain than a generally enamoured press corps. In this election cycle, though, he had admitted to admiration for Obama, before souring somewhat.
Palin, he argued, "has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."
Brooks, a former senior editor of the Weekly Standard, wrote that eight years of "inept" governance by Mr Bush has helped to persuade him of the ineffectiveness of a president who makes decisions on gut and instinct.
Writing in the National Reviewon Friday, Kathleen Parker expressed a similar view but with much less restraint.
She said Palin's recent television interviews amounted to content-light "filibusters". The syndicated columnist suggested the governor - "Who Is Clearly Out of Her League" - should quit the Republican ticket to "save McCain, her party and the country she loves".
David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, is among conservatives who have worried that the Palin pick weakened one of the Republican candidate's best arguments: that he had superior experience and was better prepared to protect America.
"How serious can he [McCain] be," Frum wrote even before Palin appeared at the GOP convention, "if he would place such a neophyte second in line to the presidency?
Charles Krauthammer and Ross Douthat, two other conservative stalwarts, have also doubted Palin's readiness to lead.
Others though in the conservative movement have dismissed the anti-Palin sentiment as elitism, arguing that presidents like Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan were also underestimated because they had modest educational backgrounds.
Steven Hayward took up that argument last week in the Weekly Standard, arguing that the founding fathers had envisioned "regular citizens" rising to leadership, in part because they possessed a "self knowledge" and core beliefs that made them natural leaders.
"Part of what bothers the establishment about Palin is her seeming insouciance toward public office," wrote Hayward, who is a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC.
"Her success with voters, and in national office, would be an affront and a reproach to establishment self-importance."
Laura Ingraham had previously contended that some Republicans who had abundant experience - Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and George W Bush - ended up with troubled presidencies.
The radio and television personality wrote that "the people [taken as a whole] are often wiser and more prudent than the elites."
- (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service)