So the big news today is that John McCain has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin was elected Governor in November of 2006, and the intervening 18 months is about the extent of her government experience (her previous position was mayor of a town of under 10,000). Furthermore, she is currently under investigation by her own party for nepotism. The story goes that she fired the police commissioner for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law, who is involved in a bitter custody dispute with her sister.

This pick completely mystifies me. Not only does she make McCain look even older by virtue of him looking old enough to be her father, but she undercuts the core message of McCain's candidacy, that Obama is not experienced enough to be President. If McCain thinks experience is so important, why would he choose for Vice President -- a job just one heartbeat away from the Presidency -- someone who has only been Governor of a small state for less than two years? In addition, the person Palin will have to compete with on the campaign trail in the next few months is Joe Biden. Joe Biden will shred her in the VP debate, and after watching her acceptance speech, I'm confident there is no way she could match Biden, let alone Obama, rhetorically on the stump.

Palin only has a couple of things going for her. She's young and attractive, and...umm...actually I think that's about it. The only other thing is that she's a hardline conservative on issues like energy (drill, drill, drill: her husband works for BP), abortion, and guns. McCain clearly hopes that her gender and her prior reputation as a reformer will draw independents and PUMA's over to his side. The crossover voting is not going to happen since not only did the Democratic Convention draw the party back together (see the Gallup and Rasmussen trackers for evidence of that), but the PUMA's were never really for "a woman" generally. They were for Hillary Clinton specifically. The ones that were ever going to vote Democratic aren't going to suddenly abandon their values and jump ship to vote for someone who is diametrically opposed to them on issues they consider important. And on the reformer issue, that is currently (as in, right now) being seriously undercut by the investigation into her nepotism scandal. How can she seriously call herself a reformer if she's going around firing people because they don't fire the people who anger her family members?

Now, I never thought McCain had any really good options for his VP pick. Romney, Pawlenty, Ridge, Lieberman, etc. all had serious problems of one kind or another. That said, he somehow managed to pick someone who is actually worse than all of them. It seems to me that this week McCain realized that in order to win this election he would need to throw a hail mary. Instead, it seems he dropped the ball.

-David Kleppinger, Morons.org Political Analyst

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