Palin was clearly a fairly cynical political move designed to fire up the base and attract women voters who don't care for Obama because he ousted Hillary, qualifications, experience, etc., be damned.
Political yes, cynical no. McCain's preference was to shake things up with a non-conventional pick. There were three non-conventional candidates open to him: Jindal, Palin and Lieberman.
Jindal said no. And trust me, had he said yes, he would be getting equally bad treatment from the likes of Gibson and Couric. Conservative minority candidates must be destroyed. Bright as he is, he too might have had a bad day.
Lieberman was vetoed by the party. So McCain picked Palin, to the party's delight and relief. She is attracting huge crowd and huge dollars and that is likely to make a big difference on election day. Ground game matters. And she's attractive to disgruntled PUMA voters.
I don't buy the idea that McCain is going to croak soon - he looks plenty vigorous to me - or that Palin is unqualified. She is the vastly popular governor of a state, who pushed through the reform package she ran on to the delight of the citizens. She has more executive experience than anyone else on the ticket. She's as qualified as Jindal and more so than Biden, imo. Much more so than Obama, who has never run anything but his mouth. |
