Some Thoughts on Palin

1) Obama opened the door to this choice by going with Biden.  Once McCain knew that Obama had gone with a safe Washington insider over Hillary, he knew he had the opportunity to take the risk on Palin.

2) Unlike Obama's choice of Biden, McCain's choice of Palin doesn't point out any weakness that McCain needs to shore up.  Sure, there is the age issue, but that pales in comparison to "I've got absolutely no foreign policy experience, so I need to get somebody who covers me."

3) There's been a lot of talk about taxes in this campaign, but the real problem is spending.  The number one issue for me is the amount of ludicrous spending increases under Bush.  McCain has long been an opponent, even at the cost of popularity with colleagues in the Senate, of out of control spending.  Palin has the same missionary zeal about cutting pork.  She's the female John Kasich!  Neither Obama or  Biden have anything to point to on this issue.  McCain has his record and Palin has hers.  This is a major advantage and one they should hammer home for the next two months.  Not only is it good sense, it will appeal to the party base who have been appalled at the Republican pigfest in Congress.

4) Biden will have to tread lightly in the debates.  He's such an unbelievable pompous blowhard that he will almost certainly fall into the trap of looking like he is being a jerk to a woman.  That being said, I am concerned that Palin could be weak in the debates.  Then again, there is only one VP debate and it is not as well watched as the three Presidential debates.

5) This may not prove anything, but take a moment to compare and contrast the running of the VP rollout for Obama and McCain.  Obama put on that silly striptease for weeks on end.  Then the name just leaked out anyway on the Friday before the announcement.  The famous text message plan was a disaster - most people got theirs in the middle of the night after Biden's name had already leaked anyway.  And ultimately, the pick was Biden, a boring white guy who has been a Washington insider since the Nixon Administration.

By contrast, McCain kept a tight lid on the choice, prevented it from leaking during Obama's speech to avoid looking like an asshole and managed to throw everybody off completely so that Palin, who is an exciting choice anyway, was a complete surprise.  The Democrats don't even have her name on their "The Next Cheney" website (hat-tip - Jim Geraghty).  That's a pretty phenomenal job of blind-siding the opposition.  Does this prove anything?  Maybe, maybe not.  The contrast is pretty stark though.

Ever since Obama's Europe trip, the McCain campaign has been run brilliantly.  They took Obama's greatest strength, his celebrity, and hung it around his neck like an albatross.  They hammered him relentlessly about his lack of experience.  Obama took the bait and changed his game from the soaring speeches to the pedestrian effort from last night.  He got so concerned that he was exposed on experience that he chose Biden over Hillary, pissing off a great many and making all of us wonder just how smart he could be.  JFK and Reagan had the good sense to name their biggest opponents as their VPs and it worked.  It's the winning strategy.  Obama whiffed on that.

Palin is still an unknown quantity.  She could turn out to be a superstar or she could turn into a Dan Quayle gaffe-o-matic.  For now, though, McCain has just crushed Obama.