The Palin Pick: McCrazy’s Disaster, or: How I Learned to Throw the Long Bomb (Emphasis on Bomb)

Wow. We are all trying to analyze this VP choice with a straight face. And some with kid gloves. I just don’t get it.

The spin out there is incredible — now, after arguing for six months that EXPERIENCE is the message of the McCain campaign (as in the New York Times reported slogan for the St. Paul Convention: Not Ready ’08 — by the way, how is that for a nice, positive theme?), the McCain team decides that CHANGE is their BIG idea. All those signs printed up, Not Ready ’08, are being rushed to the St. Paul incinerator before anyone can get their hands on them.

For the McCain team and the media to argue that this choice of Sarah Palin makes even a modicum of sense is beyond me. McCain, whose slogan now seems to be “Putting our Country First,” has clearly put politics first on this pick. One more example of pandering — forget all this maverick talk, this guy had one criterion, and one criterion alone, for the VP — political expediency. Picking a woman like Palin is tokenism — another seat-of-the-pants, rash decision that just shows he doesn’t have the clear head or judgment to be president.

Once again, he bowed to the far right, the same “agents of intolerance” he condemned eight years ago. That John McCain, who in the same speech decried a party or a candidate that “pandered” just to get elected.

Is he putting the country first when he bypasses solid candidates, on his 72nd birthday, knowing he has gone through four cancerous melanomas? Is he putting the country first with a quick decision on someone he met once for 15 minutes who is embroiled in a fierce scandal for firing her state safety director because he would not fire her ex-brother in law? Is he putting the country first, with a woman who calls global warming a hoax? Who doesn’t even believe in a woman’s right to choose in the case of rape or incest? Who believes that creationism should be taught in the public schools?

My strong sense is that Sarah Palin was not vetted by the McCain team. My sense is that they panicked when they saw what was happening at the Democratic convention and felt the wrath of the far right when Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman were suggested as possible running mates. And, in a cynical, and quick move, decided that Palin might be able to deliver some votes from women.

So now, we have a candidate for the No. 2 spot who asked on CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.,” “What is it exactly that the VP does every day?”

Please. No matter how you cut it, this is a crass political ploy that shows a distinctly devastating decisionmaking style on the part of John McCain. Do we really want him in the Oval oOffice if this is how he makes such an important decision? Not a chance.