Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Smart Pick For John McCain As His V.P.

The news this morning that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be the GOP Vice-Presidential nominee is smart politics, in spite of some who will argue that she is too young and inexperienced.  

As you read news reports from CNN you can understand why she was picked.

Palin, 44, who’s in her first term as governor, is a pioneering figure in Alaska, the first woman and the youngest person to hold the state’s top political job.

She catapulted to the post with a strong reputation as a political outsider, forged during her stint in local politics. She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasila and was chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska’s oil and gas resources, in 2003 and 2004.

The conservative Palindefeated two so-called political insiders to win the governor’s job — incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and former two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in the 2006 general election.

Lets be honest,  John McCain needed to shake up his campaign and inject some interest and excitement into the race that America understands needs to be about a new direction for the country.  Another all stale white male ticket is not where the nation is headed, and McCain understood that.  While the entire Republican ticket is still wrong on the issues that confront the nation, there is at least now something fresh and new for the media to report on about the McCain candidacy.

There will be those who will say that McCain should have selected a “stronger” and more solid choice, in other words a male choice.  There will be those who think that Mitt Romney or some other all testosterone ticket is the only way the Republicans can win.  Check out the gender of those who say such things, and you will notice that the ones who make such claims are the ones who have had the power all the years, (white males) and are now finding that it is time to share.  I am certainly not a Republican, but this is exactly the type of pick that I had suggested was the only way for McCain to make inroads.  (Though I am surprised that he actually made the pick of a woman, as the GOP usually makes the wrong choices.)

I am not predicting that women who were for Hillary Clinton will somehow turn to the GOP ticket now that a woman is the V.P. nominee, but it will send a message to some independents and undecided voters that perhaps the GOP heard the message that was being sent about gender in the primaries this year.  And that can only help the chances of John McCain.

Having Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee in some ways helped to force diversity on the GOP, and all of this now helps America move forward in how we think about who can lead and why.  Progress is being made in America, and so even Democrats like myself can see the good in having Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket.

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