McCain's choice of Palin is a gamble

The selection of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska proved quintessentially McCain — daring, hazardous and defiantly off-message. He demonstrated that he would not get boxed in by convention as he sought to put a woman next in line to the presidency for the first time. Yet in making such an unabashed bid for supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, he risked undercutting his central case against Barack Obama.

“Here’s what I’m worried about,” said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and former aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush. “McCain had to protect his reputation as an opponent of status quo Washington. He had to pick someone with the shortest Washington resume. He did that. He picked someone the Right wing is going to be happy about. But it’s a gamble.”

The question is acute for McCain. His campaign needs to convince the public that it can imagine in the Oval Office a candidate who has spent just two years as governor of a state with a quarter of the population of Brooklyn.

But Palin, 44, brings clear assets to the ticket. The “gun-packing, hockey-playing woman”, as the Republican strategist Karl Rove described Palin, instantly bolstered McCain’s wobbly conservative base, which rejoiced over the selection of an anti-abortion evangelical Christian.

Her reputation as a reformer who took on her state party over corruption and wasteful spending could reinforce McCain’s maverick appeal. “He’s chosen a Washington outsider who’ll be an ally for him in shaking up the way things are done,” said chairman of the California Republican Party Ron Nehring.