Looks like the Republicans are being punished for nominating another godless Episcopalian.

McCain's choice of vice president is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as everyone's response to it. I'm not sure what I think about it yet. Everyone else seems to have an opinion though, and all the noise from the pundits has been pretty revealing.

Here's what I know about Sarah Palin: she's 44 years old, she's Pentecostal (which is at least as weird as being Mormon) and she's been governor of Alaska since 2006. So far her approval ratings in that office have been in the 80s and 90s--having only won the office by 48.3%, which is interesting.

Naturally, her youth and relative inexperience may force the McCain camp to attack Barack Obama on issues other than his youth and relative inexperience, but I think that needs to happen anyway. I don't think most people are threatened by Barack Obama's inexperience. The ideological foundation of democracy, what we're taught to believe from childhood, is that we, the people are clever enough and wise enough to govern ourselves--that we don't need steady, conservative, wiser heads managing our affairs. Whether that's entirely true or not, it runs deep in our collective feelings, and we love to vote for a rebel idealist, untouched by the establishment.

At best, these attacks on Obama's inexperience have been a gift-wrapped donation to Obama's campaign. They give him license to rage against the partisan political establishment as if he were not a part of it; they divert attention from his depressingly orthodox voting record, and practically make Obama's argument for him, that a vote for McCain is a vote for the status quo, a vote for four more years of disastrous incumbency.

But what fascinated me most about this decision was the utter hypocrisy it revealed on both sides of the melee. The liberal pundits called Gov. Palin a "featherweight", claiming that McCain's choice was the dying, desperate gasp of a badly mismanaged campaign (a claim to which there may be an unfortunate amount of truth).

Here's the deal, though: she has just as much political experience as Barack Obama, but her time has been spent in the executive rather than legislative branch of government--which, if you value experience at all, is very significant. A legislator may learn a lot about the executive by close proximity and observation, but I can learn the same things watching C-SPAN. I would place more value on someone who had at least some on-the-job experience. In the words of Mitch Hedberg, "It's like if I worked my a-- off to become a really good cook, and somebody said, 'Hey, you're a really good cook... can you farm?'"

Perhaps McCain's selection was a brilliant gambit, to tie up his detractors. They have attacked his decision, naturally; but now he can ask them to clarify the reason for their double-standard. Surely they wouldn't attack the inexperience of a VP candidate who is just as seasoned as their nominee for the Presidency... so what is the real difference? Is it just partisan gamesmanship because she's on the wrong team? Is it (gasp) that she's a woman?

But judging by the McCain campaign's performance to date, I doubt it's anything of the kind. Maybe they are just grasping at straws, trying to steal some novelty. It depresses me, because I really do believe that John McCain is a good man, and he'd make an excellent President; and in a perfect world, that would be enough. Even in our world, it's keeping him afloat in spite of his pathetic salesmanship, his association with the incumbent party, and his almost-Messianic opponent; but I don't know how long it can hold up.

There have been so many deep, substantive ways in which he could have taken command of this campaign, instead of all these half-hearted attacks on Barack Obama's character and capability (made while insisting that he's really a nice guy). I really feel like I could be doing a better job, if only someone would ask me. If he could just find a way not to look constipated every time someone turns a camera on him, it would be a start.

--Kevin