In his acceptance speech, Senator McCain stated his learned position to be against war. Notwithstanding, he uttered the word “fight” more than a dozen times, and he invited his fellow Americans to join him in “the fight”. However, the Senator from Arizona did not find time to discuss social cohesion, AIDS, ballooning budget deficits, mortgages, regulation of financial markets or rebuilding infrastructure. An observer from a distance will wonder whether it is just a poor choice of words or a true reflection of the mindset. Someone ought to tell Mr. McCain, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”.

The selection of a thinly-educated, inexperienced running mate makes a distant observer muse whether Mr. McCain wants to have an imperial, selfish and typically Middle Eastern approach as president for life (Hosni Mubarak, Yasser Arafat, Hafiz Assad, Saddam or Franco come to mind), or perhaps he has confused the party convention with a coronation of a man that can realistically serve as a single-term president but as an interim door opener for the radical right of his party.

The selection of Governor Palin as a vice presidential candidate is a hurried sketch to energize the rural, religious base of the party with an old soap opera —a governor from a nostalgic western state (Ronald Reagan) to succeed a senator from Arizona (Barry Goldwater). Mrs. Palin has come on the scene to revive nostalgia about a simple person from the beautiful frontiers and the mountainous west, a woman standing shoulder to shoulder with her man to hunt their food as they put the wagons in a circle and shoot at redskins in a dangerous wild world out there. After all, John Wayne was also good with one-liner jibes and retorts, but not much of a planner or a diplomat. Consequently, it is not important if Sarah Palin is clueless. What is deemed more important is that she is a firm believer that the Final Judgement will occur during their time, somewhere in Megiddo, and that ought to set the statistics and the polls in the right order. This kind of Christian Zionist approach is bound to win points with AIPAC.

But Governor Palin, like Senator Obama, has a pastor problem at her Wasilla Bible Church. It's one thing to say, as Palin has publicly, that both the Iraq war and the natural gas pipeline she's pressing for are God's will, but a much different political quandary for an American politician to subscribe to a view that all Jews ought to become Christians or court damnation. The head of her church, Larry Kroon, has joined David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus organisation and a man who has reportedly said terrorist attacks on Israelis are God's "judgment of unbelief" on Jews who have not embraced Christianity-- while Sarah Palin was in church two weeks ago. Imagine the ruckus that will come out of that one!

During the Reagan years, the world was not as interconnected and interdependent as it is today and America had started a healing process of its Vietnam wounds. Is it really necessary to reopen those wounds when America has fresh scars from the last eight years, and has a depleted treasury and credibility as the price paid for a novice without a passport? Could Mrs. Palin be taken seriously at the same table by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Saudi crown prince, Premier Wen Jiabao or The Pope to discuss, say, the Darfur situation or the problems of Tutsi and Hutu tribes in Rwanda, or look into how NATO troops should be withdrawn from Bosnia? Does she have a view on the decades old Kashmir issue and is she aware that the real Taj Mahal is not in Atlantic City?

Perhaps the self-perceived Charlemagne has selected Governor Palin to revive the mirror image of Boudicca in his coronation, and is running the risk that the electorate are not history buffs and will confuse the timeline in this haphazard game show. Governor Palin is reportedly a “political blank”-- a novice with fluid and flexible political postures willing to be in the hunt as a proxy for those that are out to kill in a “fight”. However, and at the end of the day, someone in the McCain camp has to come up with a sound, sustainable economic plan. The year 2008 on the Christian calendar is especially a tough year for Republicans to recover from gross miscalculations, and poorly executed plans of a highly unpopular president of the same party. The Bush record manifestly looms in the background. America must first cure present problems such as massive and unchecked budget deficits, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pseudo-nationalizations, the mortgage mess and the urgent need for a national health care policy that is absorbing an increasing share of GDP. Soap operas and hockey pucks will not do the trick.