Like most people I was very surprised to learn yesterday that Sarah Palin was chosen to be McCain’s VP. Apparently she was a city councilor and a mayer of small town called Wasilla, Alaska (population 7,738) which is less then the size of the university campus (10,000 students) that I was elected to represent. She lost a race for Lieutenant Governor but then became Governor of Alaska and has served for about 20 months. In case you are wondering, I know I was, Alaska is ranked 47/50 in terms of population with 683,478 residents. She seems very nice and down to earth. She also had a rare feel of an unpolished non-politician which is part of her appeal. Sarah Palin also seems to be very conservative and strongly anti-choice. Perhaps the strangest thing about this pick is that she is currently under investigation by her own legislature. And to top it off, it was reported McCain only met her once before making this decision. 

My guess is that McCain’s campaign did the turnout models with the latest polling and realized he will not win the election. He decided to shake things up and roll the dice. While I still insist that it will come down to McCain vs Obama, this VP pick really takes away the experience argument that republicans had against Obama. If Palin is experienced enough to be commander in chief, surely no republican can seriously claim that Obama isn’t ready. Is she going to have the same appeal to women as Clinton did? I doubt it, Clinton had the experience argument and she actually supported women’s rights. Palin also seems to think humans aren’t responsible for global warming and wants to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so I don’t know how much millage they’ll get out of the “standing up to big oil” message once people figure out where she actually stands. 

I am still waiting for at least one republican strategist to make sense of this pick, so far most of them seem to be going through stages of denial as they list all the talking points sent by McCain’s campaign.  Most of all, I don’t know how any of them can claim, with a straight face, that Palin is experienced but Obama isn’t. As CBC put it, “an interesting campaign just got more interesting.”