I love that people are trying to raise the issue that she has "executive experience." Being governor of Alaska is a fine thing, to be sure, but in terms of actual executive experience it ranks somewhere between being my department chair and being mayor of San Antonio.

dcat

"Although I suppose that if McCain continues to make the argument that Putin wants "to restore the old Russian empire," then he can also argue that Palin has been playing a key national security role by preventing a Russian expeditionary force from coming across the Bering Strait."

Man, oh man, did you ever whiff on that one, JZ.

Putin's most potent weapon in this new war isn't missiles or nuclear subs, it's PIPELINES. This will be an energy war. Palin is the James Woolsey energy security candidate.

This Monday the EU leaders will meet to determine which sanctions to impose on Russia. Putin just announced that any punishment by the EU will result in his telling the head of LUKoil to cut off oil flows throught the pipeline that supplies oil to Germany and Poland (it's called "Druzhba", Russian for "friendship" - a nice touch).

McCain chose Palin for the Jim Woolsey reason: that national security is now dependent on energy security. He's making a very clever and far-sighted argument that if we want to get serious about resisting Putin's attempt to destroy all the gains made by a free and independent Europe in 1989, we have to find the shortest, fastest possible route to eliminating our and Germany/EEurope's dependence on Russian oil and gas. Woolsey estimated that we can do this in less than ten years. We need to get cracking, now.

There must be a conspiracy. Since mid-2007, Alaska license plates have been all over the place in the Washington, DC area. On the East Cost of the United States, it used to be you'd go decades between sightings of an Alaska plate on a car. For the last year and more, it's unusual if I go more than a day without seeing an Alaska plate in Northern Virginia.

My god, Tep!  For months you're stressing the importance of having a heavyweight, and now you're backing someone who could easily die in office tapping a person who's only been in any kind of important office for less than two years, who before that was mayor of a town of 9,000, and who has absolutely no foreign policy experience whatsoever, and now she' sthe serious James Woolsey energy pick?  Good lord, you're beyond self-parody now.

Tep --

Not so long ago you were using the patronizing, and yes, racist, term "boy" to describe Obama. Suddenly this choice is a sage one based on policy choices? Are you kidding, or are you simply in denial?

dcat

Calm down, gents. I don't care for Palin. Of course Biden is far better qualified than she is, and better qualified than Obama, fwiw.

My point is simply that, * * * given the rapid escalation of our conflict with Putin, * * *  this choice is a clever campaign strategem that could change the dynamic of the race. If Putin had not threatened to cut off Germany and Poland, AND if he had not actually used this tactic, repeatedly over the last two years against Czech, Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia, then I'd say that choosing Palin is nothing more than desperation.

However, on Monday or Tuesday we will see a raft of top of the fold stories about Putin's use of pipelines to blackmail two major allies of ours-- not Georgia or Ruritania but f***ing GERMANY and POLAND. This is major. It's central to the election. McCain is getting way out front of this by signaling that national security now requires energy security, which is not at all the same as "saving the planet", as Pelosi ludicrously claims to be doing with her head-in-the-sand approach to energy.

aero - Obama's race, like anyone's race, is completely irrelevant to me. So please stop with the race-baiting. It's beneath you and has no place on these boards. Thanks, t.

Sorry, sero - meant to direct my pleas to stop the race-baiting to derek.

Derek, it's beneath you. Knock it off.

Tep - calling a black man "boy" and getting huffy for being called on the racism is absurd.  Either own it or never say it again.

Hasn't TNR done an about about the phony libertarianism of Alaskan socialists? I'd thought TNR's two least favorite states are represented by the VP nominees.