Campaign flashback: Palin on the GOP’s ‘old rich white men,’ McCain on the inexperience of mayors, governors

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hold a rally at Van Dyke Park in Fairfax, Va. on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008. (GREG NASH/WDCPIX.COM)

If you’re not careful, the past can sneak up and bite you on the backside. Case in point: John McCain’s statement at last October’s Republican debate on Fox. Taking a potshot at the experience of Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of the country’s largest city, and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, McCain said, “I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

Now, of course, his running mate, as a four-year mayor of a town 1,000 times less populous than New York and 19-month governor of America’s 47th most populous state, is going to need heaps of on-the-job training. Of course, Palin isn’t running for president, as Romney and Giuliani were, although back in January 2008, she told Alaska radio hosts it’s a job she’d “absolutely” be interested in (it’d be an “awesome opportunity!”).

During that same interview, here’s how she characterized her own party — the one that’s running a 72-year-old white man who’s not sure how many homes he owns against an African-American man — and what she’d add to the presidential ticket:

“On that Republican ticket, though, there does have to be some kind of diversity, though. A couple of rich, old white men trying to represent a party, much less the nation: I don’t think that’s gonna cut it.”

Listen: Palin on the Bob & Mark Show, Jan. 2, 2008, 00:45