A More Thorough Article on Palin

Art Levine says it in his article Sarah Palin: The New Harriet Miers -- or Dan Quayle in Drag? Here are excerpts:

McCain's stunning choice of the ex-beauty queen, evangelical half-term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin may be one of the biggest political gambles in modern political history. But if the Democrats can avoid over-the-top sexism in belittling her, the pick could be a major boon to the Obama-Biden ticket.

And as an added gift to Democrats, The Anchorage Daily News reports, Palin is scheduled to be deposed before the election in a blossoming scandal involving the apparently improper firing of the state's top public safety officer as revenge for not sacking Palin's former brother-in-law.

She is so manifestly unqualified to be a "heartbeat away" from the Presidency, just three years away from being a small-town mayor, that the selection could be used to add to the unfolding "temperament" narrative the Obama campaign is seeking to apply to McCain. And it neutralizes the "dangerously unprepared" mantra that McCain has used as the centerpiece of his campaign's lowball attacks on Obama.

On top of that, the pick could reinforce the deserved sexist reputation of John McCain, because the selection of Palin reflects a condescending view of women, especially Hillary supporters, as being so stupid they'll rush to back the GOP ticket just because Palin is a woman. It's not unlike the way George H.W. Bush picked Dan Quayle in part because Bush's team thought Quayle was so good-looking he would draw women to the ticket.

I had to add these, too:

She's a clueless foreign policy naif anti-choice evangelical who faces an ongoing corruption investigation.

But surely she could help bolster McCain's perceived weakness on the economy and chumminess with Big Oil, yes?

Not quite: She's essentially overseen falling job growth in the once-booming state, and is largely in the pocket of Big Oil at a time of sky-high gas prices at the pump. She also dismisses the notion that global warming is man-made. As the Center for American Progress sums up:

With the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his running mate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is not backing down from oil drilling. Palin is a champion for drilling, the Bush-Cheney approach to energy policy that brought us $4.00-per-gallon gasoline and the rising threat of global warming.
Like McCain, Palin believes that oil drilling is the only solution to our energy problems. "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem," she says. She supports more drilling in protected areas of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge, once attacking McCain for his "close-mindedness on ANWR."

But the Department of Energy believes that offshore drilling "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." Moreover, about three-quarters of all the oil in public lands in the continental U.S. are already open to drilling - and yet only one quarter of this oil is under production. Opening the Arctic Refuge would cut gasoline prices by two cents in 17 years. For that, Palin would destroy the home of America's native polar bears. Not even T. Boone Pickens still thinks we can drill our way out of this crisis.

Palin rejects clean renewable energy that is an alternative to oil. Earlier this month, she claimed that "alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop."

Alaska has become the "poster state" for the threat of global warming as the climate gets hotter and dryer and sea levels rise. More than 100 towns are vulnerable due to eroding sea lines. Polar bears are threatened by the melting ice floats, and this month bears were spotted swimming as much as 50 miles offshore.