Sarah Palin

Talk about rolling the dice. In picking Sarah Palin to be his would-be veep, John McCain is making a breathtaking gamble.

The political calculation is obvious. The intent is to appeal to women, including those who are disgruntled that Hillary Rodham Clinton is not on the Democratic ticket, either in the first or second slot; polls taken before the Democratic convention showed that Obama had nailed down the support of little more than half of Clinton primary voters. The idea is to shake up the race, to cause those voters and others to take a second look at the Republican ticket. Palin also had solid conservative credentials -- anti-abortion, pro-gun -- that should make the conservative base happy. She's an attractive figure and a polished communicator.

But to my mind, the best case the Republicans had going against Barack Obama was the allegation that he is not ready to be president, not after less than four years in the U.S. Senate. Picking Palin, who has been governor of a low-population state for only 20 months, undercuts that argument big-time. How she'll do in her debate with Joe Biden is another question.

Presidential candidates always say that the main qualification for a running mate is that he or she needs to be someone who could take over as chief executive should something happen to the president. That seems particularly relevant today, on McCain's 72nd birthday. It's hard to argue that the 44-year-old former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska , population 5,469, meets that test, at least not in the traditional way. 

On Thursday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a finalist in the Republican veep derby, held a news conference in Denver as part of the GOP's "notready08" offensive against Obama. Here's what he said: "When you look at a candidate, you should ask two questions: What have you done, and what have you run? And when I at those two questions [for Obama], the answers are 'not much' and 'nothing.'" In Palin's case, the answers might well be 'not much' and 'not much.' Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was on CNN this morning saying, "She's not that well known. Maybe that's a good thing."

In the press release announcing the choice, the McCain campaign says: "Gov. Palin is a tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president." It also notes as governor she has been head of Alaska 's National Guard.

One thing this selection will do once and for all is to destroy the idea that a vice president's home state has any relevance whatsoever. After eights of a veep from Wyoming, the nation seems destined to have one from Alaska or Delaware . Each of those three states has three electoral votes, the constitutional minimum.

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