A Little Background On McCain's VP Pick (With Update)

From Trapper John at Kos:

* * * We're told that McCain really wanted to pick his old friend Joe Lieberman to run with him, but that Karl Rove and the rest of the elite Republican politburo nixed the idea, and told McCain that he had to take a conservative. And as he has at every step of his campaign, the one-time "maverick" sold out to the venal, icy core of the Republican leadership, and acquiesced by selecting [Alaska Governor Sarah] Palin. Palin is really a Republican after Rove's heart - she's a product of the party that produced the indicted Ted Stevens and ethically tarred Don Young, and she's embroiled in a Troopergate scandal of her own, with state investigators looking at serious allegations that Palin abused her office by pressuring the state Public Safety Commissioner to fire "an Alaska state trooper involved in a rough divorce from Palin's sister." Sounds like a woman after Karl Rove's heart.

In addition to further associating McCain with the Republican culture of corruption, the Palin pick undermines one of his main anti-Obama narratives. It's going to be laughable to hear McCain assail Obama's supposed lack of experience after naming the first-term governor -- only one-and-a-half years into her term -- of the 47th largest state to be his running mate. Palin lacks any foreign policy experience, and is bereft of even the two core areas of policy expertise that governors are supposed to bring to a ticket -- ag policy (Alaska doesn't have much in the way of traditional agriculture) and urban affairs (Anchorage is the 65th largest city in the US, behind giants such as Corpus Christi). She's easily the least experienced running mate in recent memory, which is pretty scary, given McCain's age and his history of cancer. * * *

If this is the kind of "executive" decision we can expect from McCain in the future, then I can't wait to see who he picks for his cabinet should he win in November. Maybe he'll pick Phyllis Schlafly as his Secretary of State. That would make just as much sense.

UPDATE: From the Washington Post:

Though it was high in shock value, the Palin pick left bruised feelings among the short-list contenders who were not picked -- and infuriated some Republican officials who privately said McCain had gone out on a limb, unnecessarily, without laying the groundwork for such an unknown. Two senior Republican officials close to Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty said they had both been rudely strung along and now "feel manipulated."

"They now know that they were used as decoys, well after McCain had decided not to pick them," one Republican involved in the process said.

Maybe the whole "shock value" point explains this selection. Perhaps McCain's plan was to name Palin in order to really attract attention away from Obama's speech last night, and then take her name out of consideration at the last possible second and pick another GOP type with more experience, like Chuck Norris.