What?!?!?!?

McCain picks Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

I am not alone in being convinced that a huge reason he did this is to cater to bitter Hillary supporters. Oh, your candidate didn't pick a woman. Well, look at me. I picked a woman. She will do, won't she?

In my view, it's a dumb pick.

Reason #1.

Reason #2.

Next, John McCain's central and best argument in this campaign is that Barack Obama simply lacks the experience to be President of the United States. And now John McCain, who is a cancer survivor who turns 72 years old today, is picking a vice presidential nominee who has been governor of a small state for less than two years and prior to that was mayor of a town with roughly one-twenty-seventh of the citizens that Barack Obama represented when he was a state senator in Illinois.

Whatever you think of Barack Obama's qualifications to be President, Palin is manifestly less qualified. And that undermines the central premise of McCain's campaign.

Reason #3. She doesn't like polar bears.

Reason #4.

Reason #5. Oh, snap. Sullivan unleashes...

The first criterion for a veep - and I'm simply repeating a truism here - is that they are ready to take over at a moment's notice. That's especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That's more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two terms years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain's pick with Obama's: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.

One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity.

She may be a fine person, but she's my age, she has zero Washington experience, and no foreign policy expertise whatsoever.

Sullivan rethinks his initial reaction a little bit.

This woman is one heartbeat away from the presidency. And that is a major issue if McCain becomes the 44th POTUS. I don't think it would be wise for the Obama campaign to criticize Palin's experience because she is technically the only one with executive experience, but now, surely, the McCain camp's argument that Obama is lacking in experience cannot hold any water. How could it?