Is Sarah Palin qualified? Is Barack Obama qualified? To be president or vice president of the country what is needed, really? What kind of experience?

It seems to me that increasingly identity politics is more and more important to people when they choose who they want to lead them. Arguably, this has always been so. But when a candidate, John McCain, is all of a sudden doing well after adding Sarah Palin to his ticket, one has to look for reasons why. She is not an expert of any kind, except perhaps at parenting (though that’s also in contention, what with her own daughter’s underage pregnancy). She has no experience dealing with foreign leaders. She has only been in public office for a handful of years and was a sportscaster prior to that. So why is Sarah Palin appealing?

She is pro-life and pro-family. So? How does that equate with experience?

She’s a hockey mom.

She’s an ordinary person.

Her personality and beliefs are what’s appealing. Not what she’s done.

Joe Lieberman. Who is he? Is he an opportunist? Does he have any loyalty or allegiance? Is he a Republican or a Democrat? Hard to answer. But i came across something really interesting on whereIstand, which has a nifty feature where you can compare one public figure to another. Lieberman agrees with John McCain 70 percent of the time. And he agrees with Barack Obama 70 percent of the time, too. Maybe he is the centrist and independently minded politician he says he is….Let’s take a closer look.

Lieberman and Obama agree on abortion issues and gay rights issues and disagree on foreign policy issues like justified torture, waterboarding, how to deal with Iran and should Iraq be the central front in the war. They also disagree about outsourcing. Lieberman thinks it improves the economy. Some pretty hefty issues….

Lieberman and McCain agree that the National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska should not be drilled for oil. (Though, interestingly, Sarah Palin led the crowd at the Republican Convention chanting, “Drill! Drill! Drill!” Football or politics? I couldn’t tell.) They also agree that global warming can be stopped, that torture as interrogation is justified, and that the Iraq invasion was justified. They disagree on gun control, contraceptive coverage from insurance companies and on making the federal tax cuts permanent. These are also big issues.

But it’s clear that Lieberman is very hawkish on foreign policy and security issues. Those are the causes he is constantly trumpeting, not tax cuts, guns and contraception. And where Lieberman makes the biggest difference is in direct correlation with his biggest issues. For example, he is the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a member of the Armed Services Committee.

So, even though Lieberman seems to be down the middle statistically, his main power lies with foreign policy, defense and security issues, which are more conservative than even some Republicans.

Sarah Palin, whose conservative moral values is one of the main reasons John McCain chose her to be his running mate, is officially on the record as supporting abstinence-only education, but it is an opinion that stands in direct contrast to her own kin’s sex life. Excuse me for saying it, but Palin obviously didn’t do a very good job of imparting these values in her own house. As the Daily Kos suggests, Bristol may have done well with some sex education.

The news that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is 5 months pregnant came as quite a shock. Though liberals and open-minded individuals may have an easier time making sense of teen sex, it’s feasible to imagine that Sarah Palin and many, many other conservatives might be outraged. But Palin isn’t mad at all. In fact, she said in a statement, “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.”

So, Palin thinks her conservative values should be forced on others but her own daughter, having gone against her mother’s (and God’s?) wishes, is in no way being made into an example.

Female members of the GOP are rallying behind Sarah Palin, saying the media treatment of her is sexist. This is spin beyond control.

Palin is supposedly going to attract a lot of people because of her conservative positions. But the idea to teach abstinence-only sex education may not be one of the positions she’ll thrive on. On whereIstand, only 22 out of 274 people, public figures included, think it should be taught. And the Huffington Post reports that many states are rejecting Federal Funding for abstinence-only education.

John McCain did something totally unexpected, (though not totally surprising), on Friday when he tapped the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, to be his running mate. It’s amazing how much talk and discussion and potential scandal has surfaced over the Labor Day weekend. Is she a good pick? Will she help McCain? Will she attract females upset about Hillary? Will her teenage daughter’s pregnancy have an impact on the campaign?

There was a hurricane on Monday, too. Not a political and scandalous one but a real one that nearly struck New Orleans. The republicans, obviously feeling a little bit of guilt from their inability to respond adequately after and during and pre Katrina, delayed their convention.

Now that Gustav has come and gone, it’s back to Palin.

Republicans are saying she was a good pick. But is that because they want to maintain party loyalty or because they actually believe it? On whereIstand.com, the opinions of many public figures are aggregated and you can see how people are reacting. David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times, was one of a few lone conservatives who think Palin was a bad choice.

It seems to me that the Republicans are trying so hard to win that they are making bad decisions. They are appealing to the lowest common denominator in people by picking Palin. They think because she is a woman she’ll attract votes. They think because she is a house wife with strong Christian moral values she’ll attract votes. And she probably will. But Palin can’t hold her own in any kind of debate on national or international issues. Joe Biden will destroy her.

And now, with her daughter Bristol pregnant, this whole thing is looking more and more like a soap opera. But I guess that’s American politics?