Palin

I’ve taken the time now and then to wax political on this blog, and what with all the furor and hubbub over McCain’s VP pick, I figured I might as well throw my two cents in.

It’s too early to tell.

We need a better idea of who she is, what she’s done, what she brings to the table before I can really say one way or the other if I like the choice or not. McCain went for a relative unknown, and so the knee-jerk reaction is to say he did it to pander to women who wanted Clinton as the Dem nominee, or that he did it to counterbalance the Obama “barrier breaking” campaign. If he did it for either of these reasons, then I think it was an asinine decision, and I’ll admit, it’s looking more and more like that’s why McCain did it. I mean, the revelations of the last few days have been far less than flattering, and McCain doesn’t need to be fighting the public and persuading us that Palin really was a good choice. Add to that the stories that he’d only met the woman once before nominating her, and it looks grim . . .

But who knows? Maybe we’ll get to know her better and see that there was more substance there than what’s come out so far. I hope so.

Who will I vote for? Well, McCain didn’t pick Schmuckabee as his running mate, which means there’s still a chance I might cast a vote for the old guy. But he didn’t pick Romney, either, which means that chance isn’t as great as it might have been. Right now I’m leaning toward a vote for nobody, or a vote for Obama. But there’s still a lot of time left in the game. I know there are a lot of conservatives running scared about Obama, but “most liberal in the Senate” or not, presidents have one goal once they’re elected: get elected again. I don’t think we’d see liberalalooza in the White House under Obama. I think he’s got some grand plans, and if he can actually get a couple of them done, then maybe things might improve. (Though I wish the man would stop making so many promises. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep all of them.)

In the end, I doubt very much if my vote will matter. 80,000 people showed up to hear Obama speak at the convention. He’d regularly drawn in record breaking crowds across the nation. 35,000 in Philly. 29,000 in South Carolina. 75,000 in Oregon. And those were before Obama even had the nomination in hand. The big news in advance of McCain’s VP announcement was that he expected his biggest crowd to date: they were hoping for 15,000.

Close polls or not, I think this one’ll be a blowout, unless something big changes. Palin proving to be worthy of the nomination would be one such big change. We shall see.

Enough politics. Have a nice Wednesday.