On the morning following Barack Obama’s acceptance speech — in which he reversed the “soft on defense” and “unpatriotic” caricature ascribed to Democrats in recent decades — John McCain announced his vice presidential pick. Betraying media speculation and conventional wisdom, he picked the female Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin.

The strategy behind the pick was immediately ostensible. On a larger level, the choice of Palin was made to counteract Barack Obama as the “historic” candidate of “youth” and “charisma.” The McCain campaign rolled out the surprise pick in a timely fashion to monopolize the media coverage after the Barack Obama’s electrifying convention speech. It was also made with two key constituencies in mind. The first constituency is the large swath of female voters that were left feeling bitter after they saw their dream of a woman in the White House fade away with the end Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The second constituency is the social conservatives, a group that McCain has struggled to excite because of his position on some social issues such as stem cell research that he supports.

On a substantive level, the pick begs one to ask, is John McCain trying to throw the election? Throughout the campaign, McCain’s strongest argument was that Barack Obama, a first-term United States Senator, did not have the experience to lead the country. By picking Palin, McCain contradicted himself and invalidated this argument. Palin, who is three years younger than Obama, is a first term Governor of the 47th most populous state. Before that, she served on city council and then was the mayor of Wasilla a town of 5,469 (as of the 2000 census). McCain’s age has been an important consideration for many in the campaign, with the increased the concern that the vice president is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. Therefore, it would be important that this vice president passed John McCain’s own “commander in chief” test. Early in the campaign, John McCain sharply criticized Obama as ineligible to be commander in chief because he had only been to Iraq once. Sarah Palin has never been to Iraq. She has no foreign policy experience. Desperate Republican strategists scrambling to prove her credentials purport that Alaska’s proximity to Russia in itself is proof enough that she has the foreign policy experience to lead the nation.

The pick also fails to consider Hillary Clinton’s factor in this election. I take the cynical view that most politicians are concerned chiefly with their legacy. If the McCain-Palin ticket is victorious, it will overshadow Hillary Clinton’s “historic” campaign. The pick may inspire Hillary and Bill Clinton, who despite giving enthusiastic convention speeches have seemed apprehensive about campaigning, to campaign actively and enthusiastically for Obama. It does not help that Palin called Hillary Clinton a “whiner.”

Governor Palin does not come with a clean slate. She is currently under investigation by the Alaskan legislature for the malapropos firing of a state employee for reportedly not having her former brother-in-law fired. It also came out after her selection that her 17-year-old daughter got pregnant out of wedlock. Meanwhile, Palin and McCain both support abstinence only education. If Barack Obama had a 17-year-old daughter that had a baby out of wedlock, I find it hard to believe that the Republicans would not pounce on it as being an example of the lack of traditional family values in America.

Governor Palin may be a young, fresh and attractive face in politics, but she is certainly not a candidate of the future. She denies that global warming is man-made, she is against abortion even in cases of rape, she opposes stem cell research and she has claimed Iraq is “a task of God.”

The pick of Sarah Palin as VP conveys arrogance on the part of John McCain. The implication is that Americans will ignore substance and policy in favor of an image. This may very well end up being true, but it does not excuse McCain’s egregious behavior.