Sarah Palin and "Experience"

I don't think Sarah Palin was that bad a pick on the merits relative to the alternatives on offer. (I'd still make a partial exception for Mike Huckabee.) As Gail Collins puts it:

she doesn’t seem much less qualified than Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota who most people thought was the most likely pick. Unlike Joe Lieberman, Palin is a member of the same party as the presidential candidate. And unlike Mitt Romney, she has never gone on vacation with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.

The point is, "do no harm" wasn't really an option for McCain. And, of course, she's a she.

Update Nate Silver suggests that Olympia Snowe -- the Republican Senator from Maine -- would have been a smarter pick. I agree. It would've made a big news story, though perhaps not as big, and probably held up better, and reeked less of tokenism.