That's why the important point about Palin's lack of experience isn't about Palin. It's about McCain. And the question is not how his choice of Palin might complicate his ability to use the "experience" issue or whether he will have to drop experience as an issue. It's not about the proper role of experience as an issue. It's not about experience at all. It's about honesty. The question should be whether McCain -- and all the other Republicans who have been going on for months about Obama's dangerous lack of foreign policy experience -- ever meant a word of it. And the answer is apparently not. Many conservative pundits woke up this morning fully prepared to harp on Obama's alleged lack of experience for months more. Now they face the choice of either executing a Communist-style U-turn ("Experience? Feh! Who needs it?") or trying to keep a straight face while touting the importance of having been mayor of a town of 9,000 if you later find yourself president of a nation of 300 million.
. . . How could anyone truly believe that Barack Obama's background and job history are inadequate experience for a president and simultaneously believe that Sarah Palin's background and job history are adequate? It's possible to believe one or the other. But both? Simply not possible. John McCain has been -- what's the word? -- lying. And so have all the pundits who rushed to defend McCain's choice.
(Emphasis supplied.) I agree with Kinsley. But then again, the same can be said about Democrats and pundits who kept saying Obama's LACK of experience did not matter and now are up in arms about Palin's lack of experience. I have the luxury of having always said Obama's lack of experience did not amount to a hill of beans and say now that my objection to Sarah Palin is not her lack of experience, it is her ideology - which is the same extreme Republican philosophy that Hillary and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama rightly criticized John McCain for having. No amount of experience or lack of experience changes the question put to voters when choosing between Obama and McCain. To me it is a no brainer. Obama must be our next President.
By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only