First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, “all-American”, but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I’m not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin’ Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who’s done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of “community organizer” and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Second, it can’t be in Senator Obama’s interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans’ vice-presidential pick is “even more” inexperienced than the Democrats’ presidential one.

Third, real people don’t define “experience” as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong. (On the first point, at the Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner in the 2000 campaign, I remember Orrin Hatch telling me sadly that he was stunned to discover how few Granite State voters knew who he was.) Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain’t run nothin’ but his mouth. She’s done the stuff he’s merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party’s corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign’s thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).

Fourth, Governor Palin has what the British Labour Party politician Denis Healy likes to call a “hinterland” – a life beyond politics. Whenever Senator Obama attempts anything non-political (such as bowling), he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting shanghaied into some impenetrable local folk ritual. Sarah Palin isn’t just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won’t need the usual stage-managed “hunting” trip to reassure gun owners: she’s lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we’re often told it’s easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that.

Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she’s been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there.

Sixth (see Kathleen’s link to Craig Ferguson below), I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe.

[Over at The Corner]

Boy, you really have to think that the Dems would like to have a do-over. They will be wondering for years how they managed to screw up this election so royally. The answer is their identity politics, and arrogance. But that’s not the lesson they’ll take. Which is fine with me.

[Update a couple minutes later]

A good point over at The Corner. This won’t just help with women–it will help with men. Who would you rather look at for four years: Joe Biden, or Sarah Palin?

[Update a while later]

Not that they’ve been high, but watch Bob Barr’s poll numbers drop. McCain just brought a lot of libertarian Republican home, judging from what I read at Free Republic. Hell, I might even vote for him now.

[Update a little later]

A prediction. Sarah Palin, not Hillary Clinton, will be the first woman president. And the first black president will be a Republican as well (of course, I’ve always thought that the first black and women presidents would be Republicans).

We’ll see if Governor Palin can close the deal with the PUMAs (assuming that the rumor is true–she’s reportedly still in Alaska, with no way to get to Dayton by 11 AM–could be another head fake).

People will say that she’s not ready to be CinC. Well, she’s only running for Vice CinC. And she’s at least as ready (with actual executive experience) as the Democrats’ nominee.

[Update a while later]

It’s looking more certain now, but we won’t know for sure for another half hour or so. I wonder if she’ll take Senator McCain on a tour of ANWR?

Bob Beckel looked very depressed on Fox and Friends this morning. He knows how badly the Donkeys screwed up a free lunch this year, even if many others are in denial.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Carl Cameron is reporting that it’s official.

I’m watching the Tavis Smiley show on KCET before I go to bed on the west coast. He has Julianne Malveaux and Cornell West on, whining that “brother” (and they used that word many times) Obama’s speech was too white.