It can’t be overstated – and it seems that few in the media except for our own Joshua Marshall, Joe Klein at Time, and Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Dish are saying it – what a disaster Sarah Palin is for John McCain’s brand. Give this some time to sink in – McCain has run on the basis of experience, foreign policy credentials, a reformer, bucking his own party. Everything he’s run for, Sarah Palin stands as an direct affront to.

 

So set aside for a moment the excitement. Let's assume everyone thinks about this for a moment over the next few months. John McCain has damaged his brand, the only thing he can lay claim to in this Democratic year, in one fell swoop.

 

And it's not that Sarah Palin is so, so bad. She’s probably not as bad as George Bush. But she’s claiming executive privilege in trooper-gate in the best of the George Bush/Karl Rove tradition.

 

And she’s probably not as bad as Ted Stevens. But she backed the bridge to nowhere, she sought earmarks for DNA testing on seals, and she’s outperformed most on getting pork barrel spending both as governor and mayor of Wasilla.

 

Sarah Palin has some foreign policy experience. She’s been to Kuwait. She’s been to Canada. But as a governor for 1 ½ years and mayor of a very small town before that, her experience is slim to none and she’s got no other credentials that could mollify anxieties that she’s up for the job on day one if on day two, John McCain is stricken down by past maladies or unforeseen circumstances.

 

So Sarah Palin is no maverick, she’s no reformer, and she’s got little experience. She’s a good campaigner and an exciting politician for the future, but not for the highest office right now. She also doesn’t have any of the other qualities that John McCain lacked or were of some concern – like experience in addressing our economic ills. Her governance over an energy-rich state does nothing to address this and can only remind us how ill-equipped George Bush was in the same area despite coming from oil-rich Texas. We don’t need another four years of energy policy designed by oil executives.

 

Her pick undermines John McCain’s biggest claim to the presidency – that his experience has prepared him to make the tough decisions of our time. He’s fallen flat on that and pandered to identity politics without even choosing an experienced female politician like Olympia Snow, Kay Bailey Hutchison, or Linda Lingle, governor of Hawaii, first elected in 2002. This was his first and perhaps most important decision as president. He failed.

 

This is a catastrophe for the McCain campaign.