Harvard's Election 2008 Blog

Sam and Nick make valid points that the Obama camp will really want to go after Palin's inexperience and ask the question "Is this the woman you want running the country if McCain dies?"

But we have to ask ourselves whether or not that will necessarily hurt McCain. A "Hockey Mom" with motherly, conservative, PTA mom values running the country? That could be hard to resist for stay-at-home PTA moms watching the tv in their kitchen. Why not? If we can run the school board, why not run the country? Sure, Hillary was a woman, but she wasn't on the PTA!

Also, let's not forget history. This is not the first time that the GOP has unveiled such a surprise candidate for VP. When Nixon chose Spiro Agnew and HW Bush unveiled Dan Quayle, the Democrats also ridiculed those pick...

...and then lost those elections.

Oddly enough, it is a trend that has favored Republicans in the past, and perhaps with good, though subtle, reasons.

If I were in the Obama camp I would be extremely careful about attacking Palin for her inexperience. That will open up the debate in such a way that people will ask the same of Obama.

If I were in the McCain camp, I would welcome such attacks with open arms. It would allow the McCain camp to shift the political debate towards the question of experience where Obama is particularly weak. When it comes down to it, Palin is running as VP, but Obama is running for President.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON PALIN 

Overall, despite being totally surprising, I feel this was a good pick (though the reasons aren't immediately obvious).

Palin, unlike Biden, visibly personifies an important segment of the voting public (stay-at-home moms). Whereas Biden was brought on board to fill the foreign-policy gap in Obama's image, Palin helps to focus McCain's message and image. Sure, she doesn't have much experience to bring, but she can make the claim that she confronted the problems areas within the Republican party and succeeded (she ran her governorship campaign on the premise that she would confront old-Republican stalwarts and, as Adam mentioned, then single handedly put an end to the Bridge to Nowhere). In other words, Palin personifies a different type of GOP, one that sticks to its values, but is trying to make amends for the corruption and recklessness of the past 8 years.

With regards to her inexperience, as mentioned above the Obama camp can either be hands-off on the issue, or risk making their main candidate more vulnerable to similar attacks.

It is interesting that the President and VP debates will look like mirror images of each other. Old-white-man vs. young African American and then Young uppity mother ("latina looking" as Nick put it) vs. Old-white-man.