So John McCain picks Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential nominee. I know nothing about her, so will suspend judgment. But she is a woman, which is fantastic. The U.S. will either have an African-American President or a female Vice-President, which is the kind of history that should have been made long ago; so kudos to McCain for his courage in making that choice.

Beyond that, there are just a few tidbits that seem to be trotted out in all the stories about Palin. She is very firmly pro-life. Unless you are a polar bear. She is in favor of domestic partnerships, although against gay marriage (which puts her in the official Democratic position). She’s been embroiled in some sort of scandal, although it’s always hard to tell at first glance how serious those things should be taken. Perhaps her signature issue, as far as national politics is concerned, is drilling for oil all over the place — she’s in favor.

One might wonder whether McCain undermines his message of the importance of experience by picking a 44-year old governor with no national experience at all. But one might wonder whether Obama undermined his message of bringing change to Washington by choosing a white male Washington lifer from the Northeast; so clearly the McCain camp thought this was worth the risk. We might learn terrible or wonderful things about her in the next few months, but for the moment this seems superficially like a more palatable pick than any of the bigger Republican names that had been floating around — clearly it was in McCain’s eyes. (Brad DeLong wonders whether a similar line of reasoning didn’t leave us with Dan Quayle twenty years ago.)

Update: I originally included a link to this YouTube video of Palin making Craig Ferguson an honorary citizen of Alaska, which I think speaks to her sense of humor. But it also involves Ferguson making jokes about her giving off a sexy librarian vibe, which is fine in the context of a late-night comedy show, but isn’t a fair first impression for a female candidate for a major national office. All sorts of jokes will doubtless be on their way, we might as well make some meager effort to start things off with more substantive considerations.

Update again: Because I don’t know anything about Palin, I’ve tried to be open-minded about the pick. But 24 hours later, the obvious first conclusion to which one is tempted to jump appears increasingly correct: this is a person who has no business being anywhere near a national ticket. Sufficient evidence for this conclusion comes from the words of her supporters, along the lines of: Sure, she’s woefully underqualified, but in all probability John McCain will live for at least another four years! And if he doesn’t, we’re sure she will have the good sense to resign.

I wonder how many times she has visited Iraq to get the facts on the ground?

You may have heard that history was made tonight. After an up-and-down convention, Obama hit his speech out of the park. And it was an awfully big park.

It was a tightly constructed, pitch-perfect speech. Obama came out feisty, challenging McCain directly and by name. Then he shifted briefly into wonk mode, laying out some of his policies for those who are too busy to check his web page. (My words, not his.) And he concluded by bringing out some of the soaring rhetoric that he does best. Here’s the text. And a tiny excerpt:

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past. For part of what has been lost these past eight years can’t just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose – our sense of higher purpose. And that’s what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America’s promise – the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

Tomorrow we can be all analytic and careful. Tonight, I’m just enjoying this.

I probably just shouldn’t go here, but the truth is that as soon as I read this:

Senator Obama would go a long way towards healing these wounds if he were to specifically praise the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency in a line or two during his speech on Thursday. That should be painless — he isn’t running against the Clinton legacy anymore, and it would probably be a good idea to remind voters that the last time Democrats were in charge of the White House, we had peace and prosperity. Similarly, he could thank President Clinton for all of the work he did throughout his life to bridge the divides in our country. This is a cause near and dear to the president’s heart.

what I was immediately reminded of was this:

In his memoir of his year in Baghdad as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer recalled that President Bush once told him that the leader of a new Iraqi government had to be “someone who’s willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq.”

Bremer noted that Bush made this point three times in the course of a single conversation and further insisted that the president of Iraq’s first interim government should be Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, because Bush “had been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition.”

Then again, my Mom always gives me a hard time for not being very good about sending thank-you notes. So it’s possible that serving as President simply equips one with a finely honed sense of the importance of expressions of gratitude, which my so-far non-Presidential life has deprived me of.