McPalin: The May-December Ticket

Less than 24 hours after Senator Barack Obama became the first African-American to accept his party's nomination for President, Senator John McCain decided he needed to make a little history of his own.

The man who will be in St. Paul next week to receive the Republican nomination named Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, as his vice-presidential choice. She will be the first woman since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 to have that honor, and the first Republican to do so.

Palin's resume is rather thin compared to Obama's, for whom the McCain campaign has long complained about his lack of experience. She has been Alaska's governor for less than two years. Before that, she was the mayor and city council member of the town of Wassala, which has a slightly larger population than Cicely of TV's Northern Exposure.

That's significant when you consider McCain just turned 72. Palin is 44. She had better pray hard for McCain's continued good health for the next four years, if they're elected.

Palin is an obvious stab for disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, even though the governor is her ideological opposite. Palin is an abortion-rights foe, a member of the National Rifle Association (she hunts and fishes--it's Alaska, folks), a critic of climate change, and supports drilling for oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)--which is where she and McCain part company.

Because of Palin, the scandal involving longtime Republican senator Ted Stevens might get a little more attention. The Godfather of Alaskan politics, who has brought in so much federal money to the state (including the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, which Governor Palin vetoed after originally supporting it), Stevens is running for another term despite being indicted for allegedly lying about concealing more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from an oil services contractor.

And now a word about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who along with Mitt Romney and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Conneticut were passed over by McCain: We never thought Pawlenty was VP material to begin with. Apparently, McCain didn't think Pawlenty could turn a blue state into red. So he turned to Palin, who comes from a reliably Republican state which was swinging in his direction anyway. Now Pawlenty can go back to serving his state instead of his political ambitions, at least for the time being.

The choice of Sarah Palin is a crazy one on all levels for John McCain. But if enough voters continue to be skeptical of Obama and the direction he might take the country, his gamble might just work.