You know what? The fact that she was a small-town mayor and is currently the governor of a state with a pretty small population doesn't faze me; what fazes me are her policies. She
is a kook, a hypocrite, and as bad a politician as any in the Republican Party ("Bridge to Nowhere", "Troopergate", etc.). Fortunately, we are not for voting her (at least, all things being equal, we're not, since God forbid something should happen to McCain and she does have to be sworn in as president); we are voting for her boss, her cynical, politically-manipulative, older-than-the-hills, so-called-maverick-but-in-reality-dittohead boss. If he really wanted to choose a VP candidate that had boobs, in order to pander to dead-ender Hillary supporters, the least he could have done was to have chosen a woman of impeccable ability, judgement and (dare I say it?) experience. Did he suddenly lose the phone numbers of
Elizabeth Dole,
Olympia Snowe or
Kay Bailey Hutchison?
There's a good reason why Gov.
Palin is hiding out from the media until such a time as she can get a hand-picked reporter to lob softball questions at her; her handlers know that, as
Obama said recently, you can put lipstick on a pig but it still is a pig. She is soooo
outre in her thinking that no matter how physically attractive she is, if the spotlight was shone on her and the right questions were asked of her, no one in their right mind would vote for
McCain.
This choice, although maybe good on the outside, at least in the sense of being able to fire up the female segment of the Republican base, shows without doubt how poor
McCain's judgment really is. If only he had chosen someone with much less baggage and with more sense, we would not be having this conversation. And it doesn't matter if the person he'd chosen was a man or a woman, either.
The only silver lining in this is, perhaps some time in the next 50+ days before the election, wiser heads will prevail and make
McCain do an Eagleton.