In what may be the worst vice presidential pick in the past 100 years, John McCain agonized over what "may be the most important decision of his candidacy...and picked the inexperienced, scandal-tied former beauty queen Sarah Palin, the current governor of Alaska.
The pick has pundits and bloggers surprised because it appears to undercut all the previous arguments AGAINST Barack Obama. For example, the Obama as celebrity meme is undercut by picking a vapid beauty queen. Likewise, the experience meme is gone because he picked someone with less than two years experience in state that is dependent on natural resource exploitation for most of its revenue. Additionally, the choice reeks of pandering to allegedly disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters because...you know, they theoretically might like the choice because Palin has ovaries.
I think Michael Palin would have been a better pick - except he is a British citizen and therefore not eligible. The former Monty Python member would have been a good choice humorwise, but Sarah Palin is a bigger joke than Dan Quayle.
The Traditional Media might buy into the Palin as reformer meme, but it is as much a crock as the McCain is a maverick meme. She was elected because of scandal associated with the previous governor of Alaska, Frank Murkowski, whom she defeated in the GOP primary in 2006. She ran on an "ethics" platform, which went over about as well as Lead Zeppelin as one of the state's Senators, Teddy "Tubes" Stevens is facing a trial for his penchant for expensive, undeclared gifts, and Alaska's lone congressman, Don Bridge to Nowhere Young has legal troubles of his own.
Until a few months ago, Palin might have been seen as a bold choice. However, a scandal tied to personal vendetta and abuse of power makes her at best a compromise choice and at worst, another Republican caught up in the culture of corruption.
Palin interceded in the messy divorce of her sister who was married to a police officer and attempted unsuccessfully to have her former brother in law fired. I suppose that might be why McCain chose her as he too has his own past where he has his own abuse of power problems, having tried to get former congressional staffers and low level bureaucrats in Arizona fired as well.
This is what Trapper John had to say about Palin:
Sarah Palin is the most unqualified VP nominee in modern history, with the possible exception of Admiral Stockdale. She's worse than Quayle.
McCain supposedly wanted to pick either Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, but was talked out of that by Karl Rove and others close to the Bush Adminstration. Instead, they settled on Palin because she supports creationism.
This is what Markos had to say about her:
Two years ago, Palin was part-time mayor of a village of 6,000. Today, she's supposedly ready to step in to run this country in the eventuality that Sen. McCentury can no longer perform those duties? Right. This was a sop to the Right, which was unwilling to accept a pro-choice Republican on the ticket, and a pathetic and hilariously desperate effort to grab the 17 holdout PUMAs (who are fake Democrats already willing to vote for McCain anyway).
Many die-hard Republicans are puzzled by her selection as well. They realize she is a lightweight and McCain's choice smacks of desperation. One GOP woman, who was thought to be in the running for VP, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, told CNN she knew nothing about Palin.
"I can't imagine a woman that's been a governor for a year and a half, but to debate Joe Biden on GEorgia, a remerging Russia, an emerging China and India, on the Middle East, my God, how does she do that?" said Matthew Perry look-alike Joe Scarborough.
I am eagerly awaiting the debate between Palin and Joe Biden because nothing in her resume could have prepared her for the presidency.
It's going to be laughable to hear McCain assail Obama's supposed lack of experience after naming the first-term governor -- only one-and-a-half years into her term -- of the 47th largest state to be his running mate. Palin lacks any foreign policy experience, and is bereft of even the two core areas of policy expertise that governors are supposed to bring to a ticket -- ag policy (Alaska doesn't have much in the way of traditional agriculture) and urban affairs (Anchorage is the 65th largest city in the US, behind giants such as Corpus Christi). She's easily the least experienced running mate in recent memory, which is pretty scary, given McCain's age and his history of cancer.