You didn't ask me, but I've been trying to process all the information about McCain's naming unknown Governor, hockey-mom of 5 (including an infant), and Tina Fey doppelganger, Sarah Palin as his VP pick.
Why did McCain make this seemingly bizarre choice after only having met the anti-choice, pro-gun, pro-war, anti-environment former Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska once? (Can anyone locate Wasilla, Alaska on the map?) Did he really believe she would appeal to a majority of disaffected women voters?
Or maybe he thought Ms Palin's Idaho-tinged, Alaskan-accented, parochial speaking style would attract the Mid-Western & Western vote?
Or maybe Sarah Palin would be just the diet to feed to those red-meat-dependent social conservatives inhabiting the South who make abortion and same-sex marriage their raisons d'être (I'm using this French term to show simpatico with John Kerry who was vilified by these same good citizens of the South back in 2004 for "looking and being French," and, just as an FYI, I eat French food and watch French films).
I don't think so.
I'm convinced that McCain is busy trying to reclaim his self-image as Maverick. And what better way to reestablish that media-fed description of himself than to name a political cipher as running mate. What better way to throw party orthodoxy out the window?
And here's the reason within the reason. While McCain remakes himself into an unbranded range animal (who became the property of the first person who branded him, the media) he gets to attempt dislocation from the current Administration by picking a woman who is the polar opposite of the current VP.
By choosing the first runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska Pageant, where she won Miss Congeniality that year, McCain once and for all rids himself of any association with that later-day Dr. Strangelove, Dick Cheney, who has loomed darkly over the political landscape for the past 8 years
No one could possible be a greater antithesis to Dick Cheney than Sarah Palin.
And nothing quite says Maverick like bringing someone in with no foreign policy experience or any national and international gravitas.
While I Can.Not.Wait. for Cheney to be relegated to retirement, I was hoping that any potential VP candidate would at least have credentials more impressive than a typical political science student.
Will America buy this latest move? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile...Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.
