and advise her to be very sure to avoid spelling errors over the next few months.

Bush senior won that year, remember?

Republicans are allowed to be stupid, nasty and hypocritical. It has come to be expected!

Journalistic fairness has come down to putting republican foibles into context and wondering democrats will respond or anticipates republican attacks.

The playing field is anything but level but that just means we have to work harder to win.

McCain wishes to be - a maverick and a fairly blank canvas, with the appropriate dots of color, sufficient to establish her credentials but with enough empty space for the campaign to fill out the remainder of the portrait.

Republican VP nominee presumptive Sarah Palin may have many wonderful qualities, but experience in dealing with a diverse population is not likely to among them. She comes from Wasilla, Alaska, a town near Anchorage. According to the 2000 Cenus, Wasilla had 5470 residents of whom exactly 0.6 percent were Afro-American. That’s 3. She may have known them. The town has grown and by the time Ms. Palin left for Juneau (the capital) it had grown to roughly 8500 people. So may there were 5 Afro-Americans by then.

There are, again from Census data, 21,787 Afro-Americans, statewide predominantly in the big cities and on the many US military bases. Alaska, in 2000, had 628,932 residents. Thus the percentage of Afro-American was 3.5%.

It’s unlikely she ran into any Muslims or Jews in Wasilla. Again according to 2000 figures, there were approximately 6000 Jews in the state, virtually all of them in Anchorage and Fairbanks. There were 3100 Muslims, most in Anchorage. There were 3 synagogues (2 in Anchorage) and no mosques, although one has been planned and should be completed by 2009. Can you see her dealing with the Middle East?

Watch out! It's coming, a further refinement of the Obama-as-elitist meme.

She's pretty charming, in a ya-sure kind of way, has anyone seen the clip from the Craig Ferguson show on YouTube? However, she does strike me as someone who really, really likes the attention she gets as governor.

Another subversive element to the pick: her rise to fame is similar to Obama's in that it resulted from a freakish election with a lot of luck. But don't believe that this college student was the only one "fast-tracking" her. A cursory check of YouTube and Google indicates that there has been a steady, orchestrated drumbeat from Right Wingers, with appearances on all the usual suspects' shows -- Laura Ingraham (perhaps they compared notes on 'youthful indiscretions'), Larry Kudlow, Fox News, even Charlie "I'll answer the question while I ask it" Rose.

All that is required is for the Obama campaign to let people know her ACTUAL opinions and it's all over. She's very extreme, and something about her -- I can't put my finger on it -- seems a bit off. There is something -- intense -- about her that is a little scary. Maybe it's just that she's a small-town girl from a sheltered life who's a bit overwhelmed, and enjoying the spotlight. But Obama's "temperament" comment may become the most prescient of all when it comes to this pair of candidates.

I agree with the observation that this selection only happened because McCain thought the election was slipping away to a tremendously charismatic candidate -- we can only hope that it will do for McCain what Gerry Ferraro did for Mondale, and then we can claim a "mandate" for the "Liberalism" that they have continually insisted Obama represents. Then maybe we can stop hearing how "this is essentially a center-Right country" from our Expert Commentators.

The media have been awfully hard on Obama lately. Who would listen to a "pundit" any longer? Joe Six-Pack? He's deaf.

A lot of us Hillary supporters didn’t support Hillary just because she’s a woman. Rather, we respected her dedication to the well-being of average Americans (of all races, not solely African Americans and the poorest of the poor). But we watched the decades-long fighter for civil rights and champion of “the little guy” be chewed up by her own party during a process that made a mockery of democracy - all to reward a guy who’s spent all of three years as a do-nothing legislator. (By the way: I’d love to have a black president - just one who’s qualified for the job. And there are a lot of black leaders in America who’ve proven themselves to be more qualified than Obama.) Palin, on the other hand, has had several years of executive leadership experience - at which she has excelled. (Plus another couple of terms as a city council member). The fact that she was a popular mayor of a small town for two terms shows she understands the issues that affect people's daily lives and effectively works to make their lives better. And she stands up to government corruption! Why isn't Obama being criticized for being a devoted father of small children? And what about Obama’s complete lack of foreign policy experience (besides his recent campaign tour of Europe)? He’s the one running to be the commander in chief! As VP, she’ll have a chance to learn about foreign policy in detail from a leader who’s had a lifetime of experience with foreign policy issues. Oh, and on the abortion issue - it’s offensive to suggest all pro-choice women support that issue over everything else. Most women want respect and equal opportunities - and if more women got it, there would be more women decision-makers government that are pro-choice and pro-life.

The Weekly Standard blog you link to does not delineate pluses and minuses of teh v.p. pick--it only lists the pluses.