As Ian Fried aptly observes, John McCain has selected a running mate who is two years removed from running a town with fewer than 10,000 residents.  Sarah Palin has zero experience in foreign affairs, has been governor for a year and a half, and is just 12 years removed from the Wasilla City Council. This is simply not a serious pick, but it fits perfectly into McCain’s approach to running a presidential campaign.

Barack Obama deftly skewered McCain last night by pointing out that he makes “a big election about small things.”  That’s a good way to describe a campaign that runs commercials featuring Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.  It is the height of irony for McCain to have claimed that Obama will do anything to win the presidency: in fact, that ought to be the McCain campaign’s slogan: “anything to win”.  McCain has changed his position on everything from the Bush tax cuts to offshore drilling and the religious right.  Was it Howard Dean who recently observed that the McCain of 2000 wouldn’t vote for the McCain of 2008?  Whoever said it, it is on the money.

McCain has said that we are in the fight of our life against Islamic terrorism, that the stakes have never been higher, but he chose someone who is clearly not the most qualified candidate to be his running mate.  Does he really expect Americans to believe that Palin would be the best person to deal with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, the health care crisis, and the economy, should the circumstances require?  Is Palin the person best capable of keeping the country safe, if she is required to take the reins.  Of course not–it would probably be difficult even to find many Republicans willing to argue this.  This choice is not about governing, it’s not about picking the best qualified candidate.  It’s about smoke and mirrors, somehow trying to convince women that they ought to vote for McCain because he has a woman on his ticket, no matter what her qualifications or her views, trying to place a shiny object in front of the media that will distract them from a gaffe-free, brilliantly executed Democratic national convention.  To say that McCain’s approach is condescending barely scratches the surface.

McCain’s campaign is premised on his love of country, his supposed ability to put country first.  But how could someone who really puts America first be willing to take the chance that the nation’s security will be in the hands of someone who, just two years ago, was responsible for managing a small town?

McCain’s selection of Palin is about one thing, and one thing only: a calculation that the selection will help him win an election.  I believe and hope that calculation is wrong, but the fact that McCain made this decision, the mos important decision a presidential candidate can make, so cavalierly, so crassly, tells us more about McCain than anything else we knew before.