I knew nothing about her, really, other than that she was the Governor of Alaska. It turns out she's an interesting person.

She's very young for this, 44, and has a 4 1/2 month old baby with Down Syndrome! I can't imagine being on the campaign trail with a baby. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. She also has an 18 year old son who just signed up for the army (on september 11, natch) and is headed to Iraq.

Politically she's a very strange pick, in that she is very new to politics. She's been governor for two years, and before that just had city positions (mayor and city council of a town with population 8000). But she's a woman, which is useful in that it might compete a bit with the sense that Obama's run is historic. And her gubernatorial campaign was a big deal: she took on basically the entire GOP establishment there with her accusations of corruption and beat not only them but the democratic contender as well. She is being investigated herself, but my read is that she hasn't done anything wrong except be in a very corrupt climate, much like Obama and Chicago.

She's fiscally conservative, which I like, and socially conservative, which I don't. She is anti gay marriage, but vetoed legislation that would deny domestic partner benefits to gays, which gives her points over her predecessor. Rabidly pro life though.

Her only downside, from McCain's point of view, is that she is much less experienced than Obama is. Is that going to make charges of inexperience harder to stick, or is the vp so irrelevant that it doesn't matter? And is she more important than normal because of McCain's age and health issues?

Update: Ugh, she wants to have schools teach creationism along with evolution. So much for her not being a right wing nutjob.