More Than A Convention Bounce?

It's now a dead heat in the national polls between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. But one wonders if McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate has created more than a post-convention bounce. To use an overworked sports cliche, this might very well be a game-changer, taking the Republican duo all the way to the White House.

Palin has become a phenomenon, gracing magazine covers, and a Tina Fey impersonation on Saturday Night Live. Media folk have descended upon Alaska to take a closer look at the governor's role in the Troopergate affair, the Bridge to Nowhere, etc., without revealing anything we didn't already know. Admittedly, she has more executive experience than Obama or McCain combined. If she's not the one running for president, it certainly seems like she is.

In her ABC interview with Charles Gibson, Palin demonstrated her lack of foreign policy chops by not knowing anything about the Bush Doctrine (which, roughly translated, means: Do unto others before they do unto you), not being much of a world traveler (unless it's for Alaska state business), and kept steering the conversation back to energy policy as it relates to national security (You'd do that, too, if you ran a state where the energy companies own it lock, stock and oil barrel).

Palin has also claimed that she could see Russia from her home in Alaska, so that makes her an expert on foreign policy. Right. I can see Canada or Mexico from my home in the Twin Cities--but only if I have access to a powerful telescope.

The Obama campaign has yet to find an answer for Palin in a manner that doesn't sound sexist or patronizing to the female voters he's trying to court. Obama also must be kicking himself for choosing Joseph Biden as his running mate instead of Hillary Clinton. It's a move that, more than his race or his lack of experience, could end up costing him the election.

The Republican Party hopes that the voters can put aside unimportant matters such as national security, the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focus on the change coming to Washington via a 27-year Senate lifer who claims to be a maverick, and a governor who represents a state with more caribou than people. Stranger things have happened. Look at the president we have now.