The choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP nominee is about as good as McCain can do, but in reality we have to ask ourselves: Who is Sarah Palin? First, she's a small-town mayor (Wasilla, AK had 5500 people in 2000) turned governor of a tiny state for less than two years. She's also extremely conservative on at least one issue (abortion) that puts her at odds with every independent or left-leaning woman in America. How stupid does McCain think women in this country are?



It's the height of hypocrisy for McCain to slam Obama for his supposed lack of experience and then go ahead and pick someone with even less experience than Obama to inherit the presidency in the event of a tragedy. After all, Obama has been talking and living with Americans and running a multi-million dollar mini-bureacracy for two years now. Palin has been fighting against the universally mocked “Bridge to Nowhere” earmark and unequivocally opposing a woman’s right to choose.



The idea of having a VP is to make the line of succession clear. McCain is 72. He's at the point in his life where it wouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone if his health suddenly failed and the VP took over. And do we really want this no-name small-town ultra-conservative woman running the country? Are you kidding me? This woman proudly describes herself as a hockey mom! I love moms of both the soccer and hockey variety, but I do not want one of them running the country unless they have loads of relevant experience.



In the end I think that the VP choices matter a lot less than people think. Mondale ran with Ferraro on the ticket in 1984, and no Democrat has ever done worse amongst women than he did. The underlying messages of the campaigns don't change at all. In fact, the choice of someone with no Washington experience whatsoever highlights Obama's point that the GOP is an ideologically bankrupt group. All their old ideas are failures, and to inject "new ideas" into the race they give us a 19-month governor? What types of new ideas, relevant for the USA, does she have?



The choice might look good on the surface, but that's about the only place it looks good. McCain is trying to run an old-fashioned GOP campaign but he's too scared to put an old-fashioned GOP name on the ticket because he knows he'll lose. So he chooses a young woman, and he expects people to suddenly think "hey, she looks young and kind of cool...let's vote for her and ignore everything that McCain has done for the past 30 years." It's insulting, just another calculated Rove-style marketing gimmick.



But will it matter? Probably a little, but not much more than that. The dynamics of this race don't change. And anyway, put Biden and Palin in the same room, turn on the cameras, and we'll see who's the dynamic choice.

