Sarah Palin

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Sarah Palin is McCain’s VP pick.

Palin, the first woman governor of Alaska, was elected in 2006. She was also the youngest ever elected at the age of 42.

She is the mother of five children, the youngest of whom was born in April and has Down syndrome. She ran on a clean government platform in ’06 to defeat the incumbent Republican Governor Frank Murkowski.

Expect her to “wag the dog,” attempting to shift the national discussion away from the war in Iraq, jobs, the economy, health care, right back to the Republican comfort zones of abortion and homosexuality.  She will try to draw attention away from the big issues, making clumsy, quasi-Reaganesque attempts at spreading fear.  She will remind us how close Alaska is to Russia, as if Asia has recently taken a radical shift to the right, and we never knew Russia was there to begin with.

Republicans will attempt to sell her as a nice person and strong mother.  Oh, and she’s a white lady, like that Hillary lady.  So, that should be enough for disgruntled Clinton supporters, right?

No doubt she has a very real story to tell that deserves a good hearing.  However, she is a complete unknown outside Alaska, bringing no name recognition at all.

No doubt this is an attempt to woo Clinton supporters.  But Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.  Substituting “another white woman” for Hillary Clinton won’t fool voters who examine policy — and Senator Clinton’s supporters are smart.

McCain would have been better off with Perot’s General Stockwell, or Dan Quayle.

I wonder if Palin can spell tomato?

Is she really ready “in a heartbeat” to step into the office of President of the United States?  That’s the real question Americans need to ask given McCain’s advanced age.