The first thing I thought when I saw the news of John McCain’s vice presidential pick, before Combinatorics on Friday, was “Who the hell is Sarah Palin?” I still don’t really know, and still don’t see why she is a viable candidate for the Vice President. Sure, she’s been Governor of Alaska for a year and a half, but what exactly does that entail? Alaska ranks 47 in terms of population, and its government is in the unique position of getting most of its state revenue from sale of oil, so much so that instead of having an income tax, each resident actually gets money back from the government through the Alaska Permanent Fund. So it seems that the experience you get from governing Alaska probably is not that applicable to governing the whole country, or even most other states in the union.
McCain’s pick is totally transparent to me (he’s hoping to capture the supposed cache of disaffected Hillary voters by putting a woman on the ticket, while simultaneously adding “diversity” to the ticket), but it appears a lot of Republicans actually like her. I dearly hope this backfires in McCain’s face–it’s just a totally senseless pick, and her only qualifiers are hotness and spunk.
And apparently her teenage daughter is knocked up. Obama today displayed a lot of decorum by refusing to make an issue out of this. Good for him; it shouldn’t be an issue. But I wonder how the Republicans would behave if one of Obama’s daughters was pregnant. Answer that for yourself.
