Okay, first things first. Who is Sarah Palin? I mean seriously. The 2008 election campaign has been going for around 18 months and the first time her name was mentioned was today when it started to leak that McCain had chosen her to be his Veep. This is bizarre. Truly bizarre.
As Joe Klein says
here, this move makes perfect sense politically. Female, staunchly pro-life, pro-gun, governor of a swing state. She's ticking a lot of boxes right there.
Couple of problems though. She is a woman all right but her beliefs (eg. creationism, pro-gun, anti gay marriage) are so, so different from Hilary's that it's very unlikely that many Hilary women will even consider voting for her.
She is young (44) and obviously an outsider to Washington thus matching Barack Obama's supposed trump card but she will be vice-president to a 72 year old who has had cancer four times. God forbid if something happened to McCain then she would be president. President Palin???
You can argue that Barack Obama lacks executive and foreign policy experience but Obama is currently running one of the slickest campaigns in recent history to snatch the Democratic nomination from Hilary and has visited Iraq while asking probing questions of General David Petraeus on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now compare that to a Republican VP who's experience runs to two terms as mayor of a town with a population of 12,000 and 18 months as governor of the most remote state in the USA.
In short, give me a break.
