Choice of Palin Is a Bold Move by McCain, With Risks

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain spent the summer arguing that a 40-something candidate with four years in major office and no significant foreign policy experience was not ready to be president. And then on Friday he picked as his running mate a 40-something candidate with two years in major office and no significant foreign policy experience. The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska proved quintessentially McCain — daring, hazardous and defiantly off-message. He demonstrated that he would not get boxed in by convention as he sought to put a woman next in line to the presidency for the first time. Yet in making such an unabashed bid for supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, he risked undercutting his central case against Senator Barack Obama. “Here’s what I’m worried about,” said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and former aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. “McCain had to protect his reputation as an opponent of status quo Washington. He had to pick someone with the shortest Washington résumé. He did that. He picked someone the right wing is going to be happy about. But it’s a gamble.” “The question is,” Mr. Rogers continued, “what does it do to the argument that Obama’s not ready?”The question is particularly acute for Mr. McCain, who turned 72 on Friday and would be the oldest person elected to a first term as president if he won in November. His campaign now needs to convince the public that it can imagine in the Oval Office a candidate who has spent just two years as governor of a state with a quarter of the population of Brooklyn.But Ms. Palin, 44, brings clear assets to the ticket. The “gun-packing, hockey-playing woman,” as the Republican strategist Karl Rove described her, instantly bolstered Mr. McCain’s wobbly conservative base, which rejoiced over the selection of an anti-abortion evangelical Christian.Her reputation as a reformer who took on her state party over corruption and wasteful spending could reinforce Mr. McCain’s own maverick appeal.Her personal narrative as a working mother raising five children, including an infant with Down syndrome, with a husband who belongs to a union, might prove attractive to working-class voters in swing states who have been suspicious of Mr. Obama. And her presence on the ticket will allow Republicans to argue that Mr. Obama would not be the only one to break barriers if elected. SOURCE:NYT.COM