McCain-Palin? A Big Goof!

John McCain announced Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate yesterday. It's a stunning and stunningly bad choice. Ms. Palin may be accomplished and popular in Alaska, but she's completely unknown on the national stage and has very little government experience (a year and a half as governor of the 47th most populace state and before that some time as mayor of a town, population 9,000+). It's incredible that McCain would elevate someone like to this to such a high position considering the presidential stakes at hand. This is a big gift to the Democrats. Now McCain's argument that Barack Obama doesn't have the experience to be president is totally undercut. That is a huge blow to the strategy of the Republicans for getting McCain into the White House. I'm sure they had a bunch of commercials planned that would harp on Obama's lack of experience, but those commercials will have to be swept aside, and a new advertising strategy will have to be developed.

The VP choice also makes Obama's theme of judgement resonate even more. McCain has years of experience, but he still makes a pick like this. The Obama camp won't directly criticize the Palin choice, but it will fire back strongly if there are anymore experience charges aimed at Obama, and it will play up the judgement theme hinting strongly that Palin was a bad choice.

I thought McCain-Romney would have been the toughest duo to face. Romney's a good campaigner and complements McCain on economics and by appearing to be still somewhat youthful (at least in my opinion). Pawlenty would have been better than Palin, but maybe not that exciting, less well known than Romney, and maybe less formidable.

Lastly, there was some pretty moronic reaction to the Palin pick last night on Hardball. Chris Matthews was trying pretty hard to stay balanced on the fence, but it was obvious that he was holding back and being nice about Palin. And then his three women guests were all somewhat complimentary of the pick, even the Barnard (sp?) woman who is an Obama supporter. I think they were all afraid, particularly Barnard, of coming across as offensive and so all gave positive or politically correct answers. The 800 pound gorilla in the room was experience, and it was hardly touched on. Why do I watch these shows??

I will say that it was highly more realistic on Countdown. Olberman obviously inferred that it was a bad pick. Howard Fineman said Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like John Adams. Rachel Maddow said it's a laugh out loud pick.