Friday's big news was that Senator McCain had chosen a running mate - - a relatively low-profile woman, Governor Palin of Alaska. Congratulations and happy talk flowed as the two candidates embraced during a carefully orchestrated meet-up in Ohio.

Apparently his choice came as something of a surprise to supporters and members of the opposition alike. It hadn't been necessary after all for Karl Rove to call Joe Lieberman and implore him to remove his name from contention as a possible candidate - - sad for many Democrats who had hoped McCain would take Lieberman off their hands for good.

The strategy seems to have included considerations that a young, energetic, conservative female would allay the fears of voters about McCain's age and feed into the dashed hopes of angst-ridden Hillary supporters. No need for his vice president to possess foreign-policy skills since, according to most of the media and much of the electorate, he has those skills aplenty.

And yet...and yet, Republicans have a candidate in John McCain who repeatedly suggested that Shiite-dominated Iran was training Sunni-dominated Al Qaeda insurgents. And he wants voters to believe "the surge" is synonymous with winning in Iraq, even though the Maliki government has limited control of the country as a whole, and the Kurdish north is a hot-bed of ethnic dissension and separatist activity.

With respect to the Russia/Georgia conflict McCain, as usual, seems not to grasp any nuance in the situation. But how could he since senior advisor Scheunemann is a paid lobbyist for Georgia? And as for the Czech Republic, McCain is stalled in the past, referring continually to that country as Czechoslovakia and then backtracking to pretend he was just guilty of multiple slips of the tongue. The bottom line is that, basically, reports of McCain's foreign-policy expertise have been greatly exaggerated. Saber rattling is not a real policy.

McCain celebrates the fact that Palin is not ‘of Washington' and its failed policies.  Considering that he has been part of the Washington political scene for so long it is an odd tack for him to take. Palin is, however, known as a reformer who fought corruption in her state, rejecting Senator Stevens' "bridge to nowhere", although the monies earmarked for the project remain in Alaskan hands. Her foreign-policy limitations have been downplayed in some quarters, notably by one Fox news anchor who remarked that Alaska was geographically close to Russia. So there you have it folks, the person who would be next in line to assume the presidency has little to recommend her in the area of international relations other than her state's proximity to a foreign nation.

But the fact that she is a staunch social conservative will no doubt please an evangelical base that, despite his conservative voting record, hasn't been convinced McCain is conservative enough. It remains to be seen, however, if those Hillary folks McCain hopes to ‘bring over' will connect with a virulently anti-choice, anti-gay-marriage candidate. Refusing a right to abortion even in cases of rape or incest hardly seems a position held by the majority of Hillary supporters. And one can't help but wonder, as well, if as the mother of a four-month-old Downs syndrome baby, Governor Palin would be ready to assume the responsibilities of elected office that would take her so far from home.

Republicans have their talking points down - - "a mile high and an inch thick" they said about the Democratic convention in Colorado. Not ready to be president they say about Obama and haul out videos of Democrats saying so during the primaries. But evidence suggests the Democrats have two intelligent candidates, well-versed on the issues and not so doctrinaire in their views that they presume to preach matters of faith to everyone else.

The truth is Democrats have a leadership team; Republicans have an arranged marriage.