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