Let me see if I get this straight:

John McCain says that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to be president, and then picks as his running mate someone with substantially less experience.

He implies that Obama is insufficiently patriotic, and then picks as his running mate someone with ties to an Alaskan separatist organization.

He mocks Obama as a celebrity, and then picks as his running mate a governor who trades, in part, on her appearance (“America’s hottest governor” and all that).

I understand that the pool of choices for McCain — maverick reformers who were still acceptable to the social conservative base — was rather shallow, but still. This wasn’t an inspired pick; it wasn’t a desperate pick; it was a bipolar pick.