Sarah Palin, VP Pick

Woke up this morning to the news that John McCain is choosing Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska (for a little more than year) as his Vice-Presidential pick.

This morning, as we do every Friday morning, our air pollution control company, discussed, among other things, getting the EPA folks in Washington and the Alaska air pollution folks reading from the same page. The EPA folks want to impose a PM2.5 non-attainment area for Fairbanks that includes a big chunk of the borough. That area, however, is much larger than Fairbanks - indeed, larger than some states - and from the Alaskan perspective, faintly absurd. Our attitude is that the boundary location should be driven by data collection that will occur this winter, and thus shouldn't be fixed quite yet, but the EPA folks have their own bureaucratic clocks that need to start now, and they don't want to wait. And the discussions continue....

Little discussions like this preoccupy the time of Alaskan public officials and, together with the distance from Washington, lead to an obstreperous attitude of libertarian independence among all Alaska officeholders, Democrats too, but especially Republicans. I'm sure McCain admires this attitude. The collision of money with this culture also leads to a vulnerability to corruption (witness the troubles of Ted Stevens and Don Young). Palin hasn't been in office long enough to be tainted yet, and so her libertarian warrior purity is still unsullied.

McCain seems to be placing his bets on:

• Drill now for energy independence (and open ANWR);
• Disdain for Washington bureaucratic culture;
• Youth and energy, including an outdoor sportsman-orientation (and guns);
• Anti-abortion;
• Disaffected women - Hillaryites and others;
• No Cheney-like wizard in the VP slot (like Condi might have been able to do) pulling his strings from stage right;
• plus, despite his age, McCain will be able to serve out his entire term, discounting the need for experience and gravitas in the second slot.

I doubt the rest of the country is on the same page, however. What makes the Republican VP pick interesting is that there are so many irreconcilable cross-conflicts going on that no one person can satisfy them all, and that someone's ox will get gored. McCain is trying to vault over the evangelicals and the big business types and go with something purer - a libertarian purity. But is this the time for a 'Hail Mary' pass?

We'll see.