She also supports teaching creationism in public schools. A salve for the base, to be sure.

Foer has it right, most notably in McCain's  undermining his experience/readiness argument.  Nevertheless, no one should underestimate her. Because her main credential is her gender, McCain's choice legitimizes gender chauvinism.   Now, after Hillary's very smart it's-not-about-me-it's-about-the-issues speech, it remains to be seen how many women will be tempted to obey their chromosomes and to abandon their causes.  And Hillary must be furious.  A McCain victory puts this woman in her way.

Tthe choice of Palin is an intriguing and bold one, for both good and bad reasons.  On the one hand, her stance on abortion could distance many of those Hillary supporters.  However, a mother dealing with a Down's child - regardless of her job - is going to swing some votes for certain.  I don't know that her lack of experience can adequately be compared to Obama's, simply because she is in the VP slot (yes, I know, if God forbid McCain drops dead we're all in her hands . . . )  I don't, however, relish the thought of her going up against Biden in debate - because she'd better be damn good to take him on.  He's seasoned, highly experienced and intelligent.  She, too, is intelligent and savvy about many issues including climate change (though why she wants to drill in the refuge when smarter people than me have said there is not enough oil there to make it worthwhile is beyond me.)

One thing is for sure - this race just got a lot tighter.  It'll be interesting to see what happens at the Republican Convention next week.

What is your basis for concluding "[s]he has notably less experience than Obama?"  

Hasn't she been in the executive branch of government for several years, whereas Obama has not?  Given the fact that all of the other candidates (McCain, Biden, Obama) come from the legislative branch, don't you think she will be able to distinguish herself as someone who actually has executive-type governmental experience?  

I have an alternate theory.

John McCain knows he is going to lose this election.  His task, then, is to prepare the Republican party for the future.

In 2012, Palin will have been governor for four years.  If she builds a credible record, she can run for president in her own right, having received good marks for being a good soldier in the 08 campaign.  She will have been moved to the front of the line for the Republican nomination.  She is the next Bob Dole without Dole's baggage.

The executive branch of government? You mean her year as a governor, or her time as a mayor of a town of 9,000?  You know what mayors in towns that size do? Issue proclamations, ride in parades, cut ribbons.

Be very interesting to see to what degree this motivates Hillary Clinton to stand up for her party and candidate in the remaining 60+ days.  If she's the Hillary Clinton she presented to us at the convention, she can neutralize most of the distaff-side bounce McCain might expect from Palin just by standing up and saying, in effect "Do you really want to abandon me and all I stand for, just because John McCain has found a female running mate - a hard right, anti-choice who has been happy to benefit from the battles fought by women, while working for the party that has sided at every step in the last 40 years with those who wanted to put roadblock after roadblock in women's progress?"

I think this is a risky pick because of McCain's age.  He needed to pick someone younger AND ready to lead the nation if he is unable to fulfill his duties.  I think picking a lightweight as his running-mate makes the age issue even more pressing for him because he picked someone that people might feel is not ready to step-in as commander-in-chief.

They talk about Obama's inexperience, but what has she EVER done to give people confidence that if McCain, at age 73, can not continue as president.  I don't care if he has a clean bill of health, at that age, a person's health can turn on a dime.  At any minute, we have this little known person who was a mayor 2 years ago, as President of the United States.  That has me concerned.

"hough why she wants to drill in the refuge when smarter people than me have said there is not enough oil there to make it worthwhile is beyond me."

Alaska is a big welfare state running on petro dollars, that's why.

Yeah, after all, there's the Alaska Permanent Fund, which will notably increase should drilling be opened up in the Arctic. I mean, sheesh, I used to live in Texas and neither myself or my parents receive federal money for the oil drilled for in our state.

Executive experience?  Sure, but only 1.5 years worth, before which she was mayor of a small town of 9,000 people.  Also, no Foreign Policy Experience.  

The more I think about this the more I think this is such a cynical, pandering, pick.  McCain attacks Obama's lack of experience day-in and day-out, then he is willing to put someone with LESS experience a heartbeat away from the Presidency.  Apparently, he doesn't feel experience is really that relevant to the job.

I hope the media does their job and hammers McCain on how he feels she is qualified to be President with her lack of experience, but continues hammering Barack for his inexperience.  Most likely, they'll just give him a free pass like always.  

Look, abarlow, anyone who truly believes that being Governor of Alaska is comparable in status, responsibility, or heft with being a United States Senator from Illinois is a moron.

dcat

The Palin pick may seriously backfire with the pro-Clinton women voters, who, if Obama wins them back, all but secure the presidency for him.  If I were Hillary Clinton, I'd be incensed.  What, are women now just an accessory?  Here's a woman who is able to be where she is because of the battles fought by women in Clinton's generation, yet would roll back some of the rights these women have fought for?  Does John McCain really think he can sell himself to HRC's supporters by picking a ribbon-cutting beauty queen with a resume even shorter than Clarence Thomas's?

Speaking of which, the analogy to Thomas is really quite apt.  Bush Sr. thought he could get credit among blacks by replacing Thurgood Marshall with Scalia's Mini-Me, and now McCain is trying to do the same by replacing Clinton with a kindler, gentler Phyllis Schlaffly. (And younger and prettier--funny how McCain has a tendency to pick up young, pretty women he thinks will help his political career.)

Sure, it'll be hard to go after Palin directly, but the Dems don't need to do that anyway.  Her negatives are not intrinsic (does anyone seriously think the "scandals" w/r/t the state trooper and the plane have any legs?), rather, she opens up new lines of attack and helps mobilize Clinton and some Clintonites against McCain.

I wonder what percent of Hillary voters were pro-life. Seems to me this is more of an appeal to the religious right than to feminists.

And before he was Senator he was an Illinois legislator for 8 years, which beats mayor of Wassila.

Consider that McCain may finally be internalizing the lessons of the Iraq War and is now pursuing a strategy of asymmetric warfare:  ------------

1.   She's a women so they get to cynically attempt to reopen the Hillary Rift (as noted by many others), yet Biden and Obama can't come down too hard on the obviousness of the cynicism for fear of re-alienating any Hillaristas who may be loose in the socket ------------

2.  She's inexperienced, but you can't harp too long on that without re-opening the meme that Obama too is inexperienced and he's at the top of the ticket ------------

3.  Biden is a fast talking, fast thinking, foreign policy expert who has been given an almost explicit mandate to be the substantive attack dog.  Can you imagine what a debate could be like if he presses her too hard? He'll be picking on the girl.  Remember how much bounce HRC got from crying on screen?  It will be a knife's edge proposition to get her to look like Bambi in the headlights without seeming too much like the hunter who killed Bambi's mother.  (Remember that obviously knowing more  about the subject material doesn't necessarily win debates, and even more, definitely doesn't win elections.) ------------

4.  She's obviously very attractive (check the first adjective in her Wikipedia bio, if it hasn't been changed yet), but you can't even make much hay out of that. She just gets the sociololgical benefit that accrues to the attractive.  I'm not sure that deriding her appearance works well against a female candidate (as compared to how well it worked, at least around the edges, re John Edwards and lesser, on Mitt Romney). ------------

5.  There's very little game tape on her.  (Other than perhaps the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant).  Is she a bulldog herself?  (In which case will Biden be able to fght back? Not that fighting *back* is the best plan, after all, last night's Patriotism Truce of Denver notwithstanding, I'm guessing the Biden play book was to be forward-leaning on defining the Repubs and not have to fall back and wait for an attack.  We know she's posited as a reformer in Alaska Repub politics.

I'm just gonna have to pray that she suddenly starts channeling Phyllis Schlafly pretty damned quick.

Thoughts?

I disagree with the lack of experience argment.  Obama picked a running mate who had experience in an area he doesn't -- foreign policy.  McCain is already strong on foreign policy.  So he picked a running mate with economic and energy experience.  And, yes, executive experience as a governor of a state is a different kind of experience than legislative experience in the Illinois and U.S. Senate.  But it's valid experience, and she seems to have accomplished quite a bit.

Snarkines of the moment:  

--McCain does have a taste for picking out new arm candy from time to time.

--Laughed at the assertion by Ralph Reed on NPR ~30 minutes ago that counter to the inexperience claim, she has more combined executive experience as a 1.5 year governor than Obama and Biden combined.  Unfortunately, in one of those examples of coming up with the pithy comeback on the way home from the cocktail party, the NPR anchor (Inskeep?) only later after Reed was off the line noted that means she has more executive experience than McCain too.

People are right to say that Biden should tread lightly about attacking her, regardless of how justified.  Remember also righteous baby lawyer Monica Goodling's performance in Congress when questioned about DOJ hiring process.  Though her notorious incompetence was in glorious display, it's as though the elder statesmen didn't want to scratch such a purty thing.

Michael Hays, probably few women vote based on their own chromosomes, but I'm projecting from a sample size of me.

Up with wymyn!

Executive experience?  The population of the entire state of Alaska wouldn't even put it in the top 60 US metropolitan areas. There are more people in Bakersfield! Virtually the entire state budget is provided by oil lease royalties. The citizens are not taxed in Alaska, they are literally paid to be there.  This is a scary, desperate, cynical choice.

What a gift to the Obama campaign this is.  It only seems to underscore the bizarre course the McCain strategy has taken to date, and which should now catch up with it. At best it seems only zero sum in attracting uncommitted but likely voters on Nov.4, filching some Hillary disgruntleds but likely alarming as many independant, and republican-base, XY McCain-leaners. But it seems like a heavy slap in the face to his essential vote, the  Republican primary voters. Selecting a virtual unknown, with limited opportunities to sell herself and the ticket over the next 2 months, rather than a proven commodity in the primary market is only going to harden more McCain-doubting republican hearts. Obama's instincts were certainly more astute in picking from the establishment in this sense. And Palin is an acceptable Romney-replacement attack vehicle for the right?  McCain is his own worst opposition strategist.

The following is from Cnn.com:

"According to the Anchorage Daily News, Palin proposed giving Alaskans $100-a-month debit cards to account for rising energy costs in May."

Those welfare-loving Alaskans just can't get enough, it seems!

To Beukema:

Does she seriously support teaching this crap??  in PUBLIC school?  Don't get me wrong, my earlier post was not in any way intended to indicate that I favor her, because I don't, but now I'm just upset that she even got near the ticket in the first place.

Clearly, separation of church and state went by the wayside eight years ago when W took office, and I guess McCain intends to maintain the trend.  I'm really sorry to hear this about Palin, because if she can't bring herself - and if the GOP can't bring itself - to break free of the evangelicals, their party is going to be destroyed by them.  

When I look at this election - and at the state of our country in general - I understand why the Europeans ridicule us.  Because we've made no progress from the days of the Puritans.

I think timteeter is spot-on.

buzzadams_stl:

You're completely wrong about the reaction of the majority of Republican primary voters. Palin's pick has served to enthuse the Republican base, with figures like Dobson, who earlier was urging evangelicals sit out the election because McCain is too weak on social issues, now head over heels in love with the ticket. In other words, she's a game-changing new-republican reformist pick and a conventional conservative at the same time. Any other typical white male with the same level of conservatism and his conventionality would be the primary narrative. Palin comes with multiple narratives, and whatever the most appealing one is is the one the average voter will likely hear. McCain gets to have his cake and eat it too,

On the question of the comparative experience of Obama and Palin, two points I think have been overlooked:

1. There have been many postings to the effect that neither Obama nor Palin has significant foreign policy experience. But one, Obama, has been focusing his mind and personality in preparation for dealing with these issues for years, where the other seems not to have been very interested. Obama’s political ambitions starting from an early age have been used against him as proof of his, well, ambition and hence a negative. But they are also a positive in that he has spent his life thinking about the issues of governance and preparing himself to face the great questions of our day. Education is a part of experience, and I think no one can argue that Obama has not educated himself well, both in institutions and, more importantly, on his own. I am no fan of elitism in educational institutions, but are we to believe that Obama, with his ambition and intellect, didn’t absorb a lot of valuable information from the people with whom he rubbed shoulders at Columbia and Harvard Law? I myself am a graduate of a school similar to the Idaho university where Palin minored in poly sci, and I got a good education there. But I don’t believe for a minute that Palin’s college experience and the subsequent involvement in the PTA compare to editing the Harvard Law Review and teaching constitutional law in Chicago as preparations to lead a great nation.

2. You want executive experience? How about organizing a political campaign that takes a dark horse candidate and, against all odds, defeats the Clinton machine? That takes some leadership and some executive skill, and in the biggest managerial challenge any of them has ever faced, Obama showed himself an executive superior to either Hillary Clinton or McCain. With campaigns running coast to coast, I suspect his staff was larger than Governor Palin’s, and I suspect he had more volunteers in the field than there are guardsmen in the Alaska National Guard (as though she’s out there in a Humvee wearing designer Kevlar with matching swagger stick and field glasses “commanding” the troops – give me a break!) When Obama began putting together his national organization, which included the most successful political fundraising operation in the history of humanity, Mayor Palin was still dealing with burning issues like…what? The road-kill moose blocking the Jorgensen driveway? How do you get off saying a person who was the Mayor of some 9,000 souls has more executive experience than the man who built the national organization and raised the hundreds of millions that brought about the historic nomination of the first black presidential candidate? By comparison, Palin’s historic place as a woman V.P. candidate has more in common with her Miss Congeniality award that it does with Hillary’s epic battles. What victory did she win? What did she do to get the slot besides answer the phone?

I’m looking forward to the day someone asks Palin about some problem the federal government has in Ohio. I’ll be very interested to see what the hell she knows about the concerns of people in Ohio. Or Pennsylvania. Or Florida.