1.  Make Obama pick first.  The Democratic convention (August 25-28) is before the GOP convention (September 1-4), so why not make Obama go first?  Surely, Obama's pick could impact your decision, after all.  For example, if Obama does not pick a lady, you might decide to do so.  This would potentially help undermine Obama's "change" rationale.  On the other hand, if Obama does pick a woman, your team might seek to capitalize on the idea that this would be "too much change" at once ...

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy....

Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong. (On the first point, at the Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner in the 2000 campaign, I remember Orrin Hatch telling me sadly that he was stunned to discover how few Granite State voters knew who he was.) Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).

Amanda, What would we do without Reuters photographers keeping us informed of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's footwear?

DANA BASH: Yes.

ROBERTS: The baby is just slightly more than four months old now. Children with Down's syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?

I think Dana Bash was caught off guard with that "question." She awkwardly responded: "I guess -- my guess is that, perhaps, the line inside the McCain campaign would be, if it were a man being picked who also had a baby, but -- you know, four months ago with Down's Syndrome, would you ask the same question?"

Probably not. I'd like to know if Roberts also wonders if Joe Biden should have given up his U.S. Senate seat to stay home with his sons after his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. Is he a bad, neglectful parent, too?

Update: Meanwhile, bloggers at the DailyKos are wondering if the baby is really hers. They think she might have faked the pregnancy and her disabled child is really a grandchild.

The selection of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee does a number of things for the McCain campaign, all of them good --

1. It begins to close the energy gap. The biggest problem for the GOP this year is that Obama devotees were vastly more energized than McCain supporters. Even though polling looked close, the other side was more excited about their candidate. The Palin pick will help Republicans to catch up, exciting the party’s base – particularly religious conservatives.
2. It underscores the best issues for McCain – drilling for oil and cutting government waste. Palin’s obviously an expert on energy production (taxpayers in her state get yearly government checks because of it) at the same time she’s won credibility taking on big oil companies. She’s also been tight-fisted (and veto prepared) when it comes to cutting spending.
3. She emphasizes McCain’s credibility as a reformer. She’s clearly identified with the reform wing of the notoriously corrupt Alaska Republican Party. McCain owned the title “reformer” in 2000 – with his talk of cleaning up lobbyist influence and special interests in Washington. No he should recapture the designation and make the most powerful and important point of this election cycle: you can’t clean up government by expanding it. The only way to fight government corruption is to shrink government, not grow it. McCain and Palina re the right team to go to Washington to drain the swamp and give back the people’s money – not to expand the bureaucracy with dozens of ambitious new federal programs.
4. Palin allows Republicans to compete on the novelty front. One of Barack’s biggest advantages has been the widespread sense of wonderment he inspires: “I can’t believe we can really elect a black guy on a national ticket!” Now McCainiacs can claim a miracle of our own, as we pinch our delirious selves: “I can’t believe we can really elect a woman on a national ticket – and a conservative woman at that!”
5. The choice should help to reassure grumblers on the right who have insisted that McCain isn’t a “real conservative.” For these folks, the Arizona Senator’s lifetime rating of 82.3% from the American Conservative Union was never enough (Obama’s number is 8%, and Biden’s is 13%). Along with his pro-life, pro-gun, never-supported-a-tax increase voting record, McCain now shows that in the most important decision of his political career he reaches to the right, not to the center. Sure, he offered praise for his friends Lieberman and Ridge (talk is free, after all) but when it counted to define his legacy, to launch his administration, he selected one of the nation’s most conservative governors – and a stalwart leader on the human life issue. More than anything else, this shows McCain’s true political identity, and should reinforce his promise to appoint Justices like Alito and Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
6. Yes, this undermines McCain’s future use of the experience issue, but that’s almost certainly a good thing, too. The experience issue has never worked well in presidential elections: Gerald Ford tried it against a one-term Governor of Georgia (the worthless Jimmy Carter) and lost; Carter tried it against Reagan (no foreign policy experience as Governor of California!) and got wiped out; George H.W. Bush tried to make it stick against Bill Clinton and the result was the lowest percentage of the vote for a Republican candidate since Wiliam Howard Taft. The line McCain’s been using “He’s Not Ready to Lead” is still viable – and should emphasize a discussion of Obama’s policies, not his job history—his radicalism, not his resume. Meanwhile, we should invite comparisons of Governor Palin’s experience with Obama’s: won’t the PTA connect more with middle class voters than “community organizer,” and property tax-cutting small town mayor count more than slippery State Senator who voted “present” a disquieting proportion of the time. In any event, both tickets now balance experience with youthful energy – but McCain is balancing it the right way, with the experience at the top.
7. The televised Vice Presidential Debate in October suddenly becomes an important media event, and offers more risks for Joe Biden than Sarah Palin. If the GOP had nominated a “boring old white guy” (Romney, Lieberman, Ridge, or even Pawlenty—who’s not old) few viewers would have tuned in. The novelty of a young, attractive female taking on grizzled Joe Biden will give this debate special juice. The expectations for Palin are so low she should have no difficulty (if well prepared) in exceeding them. Moreover, Biden can’t fire back contemptuously the way Lloyd Bentsen did against Dan Quayle because Palin is a sympathetic female. Republican Rick Lazio lost the Senatorial election against Hillary when he tried to be too tough and confrontational in the debate. Palin, on the other hand, can surprise the world by being as aggressive as possible against Biden --- after all, her nickname on her state championship high school basketball team (she was point guard) was “Sarah Barracuda.”

On Sunday, along with the rest of the Republican world, I get on a plane to travel to St. Paul. Suddenly, my attitude toward the journey has become more than dutiful --- like so many others, I feel vastly more eager, pumped, energized, optimistic about the Republican Convention. In an election that’s all about energy shortages and potential energy shortages, the Governor of Alaska has given the best possible birthday gift to John McCain.