Gov. Sarah Palin for Veep

Now that Senator and "Borker-in-Chief" Joe Biden has been announced as Obama's Veep pick my advice to Senator McCain is to add a proven winner to his ticket, someone who can balance out the negatives that he has with the base of the Party, someone who will inject charisma into his otherwise dead pan political delivery.

That someone, I contend, is the most popular governor in the country, Alaska's Sarah Heath Palin. She will put an attractive, knowledgeable and strategic face on the "drill here, drill now, and pay less" imperative that the majority of Americans are demanding, and she is poised to duke it out with the AFI-CIO and Biden.

RealClearPolitics.com contributer Jack Kelly sums up Palin's upside thus:

At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska's relatively brief history as a state. She's also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.
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Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice. A happily married mother of five who is still drop dead gorgeous. And smart to boot.

But it's mostly because she's been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.

Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Sen. McCain has been accused of rounding. Track, her eldest son, enlisted in the Army last Sept. 11. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons. A regular churchgoer, she's staunchly pro-life.

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal said Sen. McCain should run against a corrupt, do-nothing Congress, a la Harry Truman. If he should choose to do so, Gov. Palin would make an excellent partner "The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have crossed Sarah," pollster Dave Dittman told the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes.

Sen. Barack Obama's support has plunged recently among white women. Many Hillary Clinton supporters accuse him -- I think unfairly -- of being sexist. Having Sarah Palin on the ticket could help Sen. McCain appeal to these disgruntled Democrats.

Click here to read the full Jack Kelly article.

There is a bit of downside to Palin that seems to me to have been conjured up recently by Democrats in Alaska and by national Union bosses who may just be attempting a little sabotage.

Having a reputation for extreme zealousness in cleaning up corruption, Palin has recently been accused of unethical behavior herself. This charge stems from her having a deadbeat ex-brother-in-law (her sister Molly's ex-husband, Mike Wooten) who, though apparently having significant ethical challenges of his own as a State Trooper and in his personal life, has retained his job way longer than seems reasonable.

After an Alaska State Department of Public Safety internal investigation, which was carried out before Palin became Governor, Wooten suffered only a 10 day suspension for his documented unethical behavior, which included DUI, violating state hunting laws, assault, using his badge in an oppressive manner, etc. The union provided him with an "advocate," union representative John Cyr, during an internal investigation of his misconduct.

[Wooten was suspended] for 10 days. He also was punished for illegally shooting a moose and using a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson. The trooper admitted to using the Taser on his stepson in a "training capacity" and said he shot a moose on his wife's tag, but didn't think the act was illegal.

Cyr said the Public Safety Employees Association filed a grievance regarding the 10-day suspension and the punishment was later reduced to five days.

See Agency leader changed ruling in trooper case.

This union representative has been advocating for Wooten for over 3 years, currently as the executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association (interesting promotion - from State Trooper and PSEA Rep in 2005 to executive director of the PSEA in 2008 - wow!).

Recently Palin was accused by the PSEA of having a vendetta against her sister's ex-husband such that she used her influence as Governor (they say) to pressure Wooton's commanders to fire him, and when the commanders refused to do so she retaliated (they say) by firing Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008.

Legislators are seriously considering hiring an independent investigator to examine whether Gov. Sarah Palin, her aides or her husband pressured commanders to fire Trooper Mike Wooten, and whether she then fired the state's top cop when Wooten stayed on the job. Palin denies anything like that happened.

See Is Wooten a good trooper? (7/27/08).

Last month John Cyr, as "the spokesman" for the union, released a bunch of Wooten's information to the press, ostensibly to show his "client" was being railroaded, but more likely to attempt to trash Gov. Palin.

...a spokesman for the troopers' labor union, the Public Safety Employees Association, held a press conference saying Wooten has been unfairly targeted by the governor's family.

The spokesman, John Cyr, also released a several-inch-thick file of the troopers' own investigation into charges from Palin, her husband, Todd, and other members of her family that Wooten committed unethical and illegal acts, which they said included drunken driving and illegal hunting.

See Palin denies accusation over firing of Monegan (7/18/08).

My guess is that the Alaska union feels a bit threatened by a governor who wants to clean house and take them to the mat and perhaps the AFL-CIO has commanded the Alaska Public Safety Employees Association to do "whatever it takes" to poison Palin's chances of being picked by McCain as his VP and taking her "anti-union tactics" national.

That alone is proof positive that she is the right woman for the job of McCain's running mate and our Vice-President of the United States.