McCain makes a bold move
<p>Picking Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee was a clever and gutsy thing for John McCain to do.  I think he has just wrong-footed the Democrats on several levels.</p>
<p>First, this choice looks bold and change-making in exactly the way Obama&#8217;s choice of Biden did not.  Instead of a tired old pol with a history of scandal and gaffe (not to mention the bad hairplugs), McCain chose a fresh-faced frontier girl married to an <s>Inuit</s> Yup&#8217;ik Indian.  And one with a history of whistleblowing on corrupt Republicans.</p>
<p>Second, this tells us something about McCain&#8217;s relationship to the Republican base: either he figures the more reactionary end of the red-meat Right has no place else to go, or he thinks they don&#8217;t actually care what shape a President&#8217;s gonads are any more, or the color of the person the President sleeps with.</p>
<p>Third, it puts the PUMAs further in play.  The most obvious message here is that McCain wants all those disgruntled Hillary-voting older women out there voting for him.  Just going on her tough-babe bio, I think Palin has a pretty good chance of drawing them, too, especially if she&#8217;s any good as a stump speaker.</p>
<p>Fourth, McCain just put a helluva spoke in Hillary Clinton&#8217;s wheels if she&#8217;s got ambitions for 2012.  I&#8217;ll see your fake working-class-woman persona and raise you with the real deal, he says.  There&#8217;s no way a Wellesley and Yale Law grad can win an authenticity competition with a woman who shoots moose and pilots her own float plane.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a pass-the-popcorn moment for sure.  How many politicians can both play the &#8220;diversity&#8221; card and brandish a lifetime membership in the NRA?  And just to put the cherry on top for Republicans, this move might upstage all the hope-and-change posturing at the DNC.</p>
<p>All in all, a very clever choice &#8212; and not in isolation.  The McCain campaign is starting to punch seriously just as Obama&#8217;s seems to be losing momentum; the choice of Biden was a  hard stall, and their attempt to suppress an issues ad tying Obama to terrorist Bill Ayers via lawsuit threats isn&#8217;t winning them any friends.  Couple these with the dead-heat poll numbers at a moment when on historical patterns Obama ought to have a huge lead, and I see trouble for the Democrats.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve begun to wonder in the last week if the epitaph on Obama&#8217;s political grave will read &#8220;He peaked too early.&#8221;  I&#8217;m thinking that looks increasingly likely now.</p>
<p>Update: Heh. And there&#8217;s already a <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qwNGaeCRkvY/SLgIcjWvoMI/AAAAAAAAAnk/H1bG2FKHQYA/s1600-h/hot.jpg">picture circulating</a> of Palin aiming a a scope-sighted M-4 like she knows how.  In Iraq.  That&#8217;s gonna cause heartburn in <em>all</em> the right places.  </p>
