There have been about a million diaries, blogs, and articles spawned today about the pick of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP. Virtually all the intelligent analysis agrees that she would make a terrible vice president, it will be frightening to have her a heartbeat away from being the "leader of the free world" (there's a great article summarizing most of the reasons why here), and even that her very selection is an insult to women. But that's the intelligent analysis made by people who research, and analyze, and compare, and think. This pick was not made for those people.
This pick was made for the people who aren't paying attention, who don't know the candidates positions, this pick was made for the (extremely) low information voters. John McCain seems intent on proving the truth of the old H. L. Mencken saying,
"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
With this pick John McCain is saying "a majority of the American people are not smart enough to be repulsed by the fact that despite my arguments for the need to have experience in the White House in a dangerous world with crises brewing domestically and overseas, I'm picking a first term governor of a remote state with absolutely no foreign policy experience to be my running mate. These people will be dazzled that she's a woman and has a nice American story." It's a shameless shameless pander.
I've read diaries where people insist the Americans will feel insulted and reject this pick and that the McCain's candidacy is effectively over. But I'm not so sure. The "problem" with this site is that the viewpoints offered are almost uniformly made by intelligent people, and thus there can be a general consensus that Palin is a terrible pick. But there are people in this country who will see Palin on TV, feel that she looks honest and decide to vote for McCain. There will be working class people who will believe that John McCain's economic plan will work for them simply because the message is coming from a mother with five kids. There will be people who will believe John McCain has the solution to the energy crisis simply because Palin is governor of a state with some oil reserves. There will be hundreds of assumptions made about McCain and Palin's positions and values based solely on the fact that Palin is a youngish, middle-class, hockey mom and she's on McCain's ticket.
That's the one thing we should keep in mind with this discussion. Just because this pick will turn off intelligent people, doesn't mean there aren't still millions of people around the country that may buy it. McCain's gamble can backfire, but that will require work on our part to reach those people who otherwise never really think about the choice that they have to make, what each candidate is proposing, and what each vice presidential pick says about the person who made it. As Obama said in his acceptance speech "change doesn't come from Washington, we have to bring change to Washington".