by John Farmer Jr.
The Star Ledger
 
When the news came that John McCain was poised to nominate a maverick female with executive experience in local government and as a governor to be his vice presidential running mate, I was hopeful.
I knew and worked for such a woman: a county freeholder, then president of the State Board of Public Utilities, then a two-term governor of a major state, then a presidential cabinet member.  More executive experience than anyone in the race.  By a long stretch.
I knew her to be tough, fair-minded, extremely independent, and courageous.  I had seen her make the difficult, character-defining decisions only an executive has to make.  Without exception – and almost to a fault – she put the interests of her state and the dictates of her conscience above her political interests.  So I had hope.
For about a millisecond.
Then reality reasserted itself.  Of course, I remembered.  She will never be the pick.  Christie Whitman will never be the pick.
Why?  The answer tells us something disturbing about our political system.
One obvious reason Whitman wasn’t picked is that she has an extensive executive record, and anyone with an extensive record is easier to attack than someone whose time making governmental decisions has been limited, such as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, or someone who has never had to make such decisions at all, such as everyone else in the race.  Anyone with an extensive record will have made mistakes.
Whitman’s record, moreover, has been criticized vehemently by both conservatives and liberals, though on different issues and for different reasons.  But that is precisely the point.  Because she has never adhered to ideological orthodoxy of any stripe, Whitman embodies the one thing the left and right wings detest more than each other: true independence.
As governor and as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, she made decisions that could have enamored her to liberals and conservatives.  Conservatives could have applauded the way her administration cut taxes and controlled spending, her support for abstinence sex education in schools, her support for parental notification in the case of abortions involving minors, her support for welfare reform and her proposal to restrict late-term abortions in a constitutional manner.
Liberals could have applauded her support for unprecedented levels of spending on the state’s poorest school districts, her conditional veto of the partial-birth abortion bill, her commitment to conserve 1 million acres of open space, her refusal  to support repeal of New Jersey’s ban on assault weapons and her strong environmental record on such issues as brownfields restoration and clean air.  They could also have lauded her nominations of the first female attorney general and chief justice, as well as the first African-American justice, to the state’s Supreme Court.  That court’s progressive tradition was continued under the leadership of her appointees.
Instead, for the past eight years she has been vilified by both, with an intensity usually reserved for the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the two parties.
Think McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden have it tough?  During Whitman’s re-election campaign, baseball cards bearing her photo with a daily “baby murder count” were mass-mailed to the “base” by the so-called “Christian” right.
The left win, moreover, has smeared her record relentlessly, blaming her for everything from summertime droughts to the current fiscal crisis.  Most egregious has been the blood libel that as EPA administrator she deliberately misled responders at Ground Zero about the air quality, putting their health and even their lives at risk.  The fact that she repeatedly advised responders to wear protection goes unmentioned.
But if nothing else is clear from the presidential race, this is: Anyone, and anyone's record, can be smeared. So John McCain is portrayed as an unhinged former POW, Barack Obama as a closet Muslim sociopath, Sarah Palin as a locked-and-loaded pompom girl and Joseph Biden as a windbag- plagiarist gaffe machine. The "better angels of our nature" have folded their wings until after the election.
The difference, in Whitman's case, is that because she has been in no one's camp, no one's camp has been there to defend her. The effects of the distortions and personal attacks on her have not been mitigated, as they have with the others, by a vigorous defense mounted by staunch allies. The price of exercising independent judgment has been, in effect, a war on two fronts. With few allies.
The irony is that by all indications, independent judgment is precisely what the voting public thinks the country needs. The voters in both parties rejected the establishment candidates. Both McCain and Obama were viewed -- and cultivated their images -- as mavericks, agents of change.
But both candidates have had to learn the lesson illustrated by Whitman: If you want the support of either party, you have to make peace with the views of its most extreme elements. If you do so, they will defend you and smear your opponent, but you must sacrifice your freedom of thought and judgment; if you don't, however, they will not rise to your defense but will join the attack, smearing you and your record.
During her successful re-election campaign against future governor Jim McGreevey, Whitman was presented with evidence of some of her opponent's eccentricities. Not only did she refuse to allow the information to be used, but she threatened to fire anyone caught leaking it. "No one should want to win that much," she said.
Americans want a president who will exercise independent judgment; the political process assures that that quality is diminished, if not taken away entirely. The hope here is that either President Obama or President McCain will deliver the real "change we need," breaking the stranglehold of extreme elements on our two par ties.
In the meantime, the true mavericks, people of real experience and accomplishment like Christie Whitman will be left to fight for their reputations and their place.