Palin for (Vice) President!

Just over a month back now, Jon MacKane was heard muttering under his breath “I don’t care what the papers say about me, as long as they spell my name right.”
And so he unleashed a Miss Palin upon the world.
The 2008 US election, which had been very much about Barack Obama, has since been very much about the Republican running mate.
Sarah Palin, photogenic, gun-touting, Evangelical Christian, inexperienced governor of Alaska, mother of five, including a pregnant teen, has since hogged newspaper inches and radio and TV seconds here, let alone across the pond.
She’s captured the imagination and the empathy of small-town America, and John McCain’s benefited by association. Embarrassment in a Katie Couric interview aside, she’s emerged relatively unscathed from intense questioning, while even managing to reverse the Republicans’ poll deficit.
The Democrat running mate didn’t matter – it’s all about Obama. McCain had to make a gutsy choice. But playing Obama at his own ‘biggest celebrity in the world’ game might have been a big error. The Republicans should have stuck to their guns, played to their number one strength – experience.
McCain was never gonna win because of who he is, but only because he’s not Obama, 47 and black. But now he’s given the all-important swing voters in states like Ohio something to vote against.
Of course, you vote Presidents into the White House, not out. (An idea for next time round perhaps). But, psychologically, it is easier to vote against someone because you dislike them than vote them in because you do have faith in them.
For politically ignorant Americans it will come down to who you take a fancy for, but most importantly – given the level of fear of a worsening economic crisis right now – who you trust.
Both Obama and Palin appear to be Brave New World politicians. Of course, considering Obama’s traditionalist education and Palin’s focus on family and home, those judgements are only correct on a superficial level. But these are the judgements that I think will be made by the people who will make the difference in less than a month.
Now’s the time for someone Americans can trust to guide them clear of the recession that threatens to overshadow the election. McCain had experience on his side, but, with Sarah Palin, his greatest popularity tool, I can’t help but think that he might just have shot himself in the foot.