On this Episode of "The Old and the Restless"...

It's shaping up to be the best show this fall, filled with juicy plot twists, unexpected surprises, and personal sagas. Our heroine tries to get her sister's ex fired in an act of passionate family revenge. She chortles mirthfully when someone publicly calls an opponent a "bitch." She was a beauty pageant winner in high school. Her out-of-wedlock teenage daughter becomes pregnant.

No, this isn't a description of the latest soap opera; and it isn't a series of dramatic happenings from the trailer park down the road. Is is sad indeed that a major, completely viable US presidential candidacy has been reduced to such tawdry and utterly ridiculous news flashes over a VP pick. I know other writers here are preparing posts on Sarah Palin now, so I don't want to step on any toes, but I need to say a few words before the time peg passes. This is simply too spectacularly preposterous a choice to remain silent about.

The appeals of Sarah Palin are transparently obvious, politically calculating, and deeply cynical. She is a social conservative, an "ordinary American" (read: not from a top educational pedigree, socio-economic class, or the liberal and un-American coasts), a "reformer," and - perhaps most importantly in McCain's audacious and irresponsible reasoning - a woman.

But over the last three days, every potential plus (besides the sexual plumbing) of Palin to McCain ticket has been systematically dismantled by a few reporters with laptops. (Nevermind Obama's team of professional biography-divers.) She's a family values social conservative? Um, having your 17 year old daughter get pregnant out of wedlock doesn't seem very "valueful" to me. She's a reformer? It took less than 24 hours for it to be known that Palin supported the corrupt Ted Stevens political machine; she supported earmarks in her state; she supported the "bridge to nowhere." If this is a reformist background (indeed, these are all at the top of her list of credentials on Friday), then the maverick name truly has lost its meaning. Obama's too inexperienced for the job? Great, so let's counter with a newbie governor of a state with less than a million people whose previous job was as a the mayor of a town of under 10,000. In line after a 72 year old man with health problems, this isn't bold and courageous - this is stupid, impulsive, and completely irresponsible. It also demolishes McCain's most forceful argument against Obama - experience. (Although in an amazingly typical act of GOP spin doctoring, the word on the convention floor is that Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden combined. I kid you not.)

So we're left with the two X chromosomes. In perhaps the most foolish move of McCain's candidacy yet, he has gambled that women, upset with Obama and still fuming over the treatment of Hillary in the media, will flock to someone who shares their gonads. Palin herself played this up with reference to the "glass ceiling" in her exceptance speech. First of all, this claim is condescending in the extreme towards American women: multiple recent polls are showing that women aren't fooled by such a blatant appeal to their sisterhood (in fact, if anything this ploy is pushing women towards Obama - see polling data).

If Palin stays on the ticket - a number of commentators are already comparing her to
Thomas Eagleton, a hapless Democratic VP pick in 1972 who withdrew shortly after the general election campaigning began - then the McCain soap opera will devolve into even more of a farce. We've had three days with Sarah Palin, not even enough time to order a book on Amazon.com and get it in the mail, and look at the mess that's been dredged up already. If she stays on the scene, unless she's an exceptional campaigner and debater, she could really prove to be an albatross around McCain's neck. What's the old prescription for vice picks in the generals? "Do no harm." Palin has already harmed the McCain brand irrevocably.

I'm going to stop here. I've barely scratched the surface on this issue, so I hope you add your comments and other writers get their Palin posts out soon. Who knows, the show might not last too long.