worthy of Karl Rove, himself, who recently observed of candidate Obama that he would “choose a running mate based on political calculations, not the person’s readiness for the job,” and added:

I think he’s going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice. He’s going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he’s going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He’s not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president.

I’m grateful to Susan Russell for sending me to Giovanna Negretti’s commentary in today’s Boston Globe. Says Negretti, in part:

I find it incredibly startling that McCain would choose a person he hardly knows for a job as important as the Vice Presidency of the United States. It is so obvious that he is doing this as a political tactic that it makes me question his judgment. Is that the way he will make decisions about our economy, our security, our well-being as a nation? If, God forbid, Senator McCain dies during his presidency then he will entrust this nation with a person with zero foreign affairs experience, whom he hardly knows to be the Commander in Chief? How irresponsible is that?

I can appreciate that this is a historic moment for women but what is insulting and shameful is that it comes as a result of political tactics and not merits. As a woman, I am insulted. I can’t help but asking how does he dare insult the intelligence of millions of women who voted for Clinton with this tactic of trying to appeal to them by choosing a woman with no qualifications as a vice presidential candidate. What does he think, that women are stupid? Or is he implying that people supported Hillary just because she was a woman? People supported Hillary because they thought she was the best qualified person for the job. It just so happened that she was a woman, which made the decision to support her even more exciting.

And Sharon Shaw, in a post with the wonderful head,”McCain’s got himself a goil,” opines that McCain may have been “more myopic than usual” and says further:

In a doddering effort to snag the Dem’s Hillary PUMAs, he insults a good many women with his assumption that one pair of high heels is as good as the next when it comes to luring the female voter. So to win liberal Hillary supporters, he offers a pro-life, anti-gay, anti-environment, big business Republican whose major claim to fame is having spawned numerous times.