John McCain thought that by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate he would trump Barack Obama's "popularity" by winning the popularity contest. McCain really believed what he suggested in that ad comparing Obama to Britney and Paris Hilton. He really did think Obama was just a pretty face who could give a good speech. So he got his own pretty face, his own "talking head," and truly believed that doing so would undermine Obama.
His current place in the race is showing him just how wrong he was.
McCain thought that getting a high school cheerleader on the ticket would undo Barack Obama because he saw the phenomenon around Obama as superficial. I am sure his team thought that Sarah Palin would expose Obama as shallow. I think they purposely picked an unprepared, scandal-ridden up-and-coming politician because that's what they thought Obama was. They thought Americans were flocking to Obama because of his beauty, because of his rhetoric, and because of his "celebrity."
They thought Sarah Palin, who really IS what they thought Obama was, would expose Obama as a hack. Instead, it did the opposite. This strategy backfired on the McCain campaign big time. Instead of making Obama look like a novice worthy perhaps of a VP spot but not the top spot, Palin undermined McCain's experience while highlighting Obama's.
Palin demonstrated how smart Obama really is and showed that Obama's argument that one needs good judgment and not just accumulated time in Washington to be a good leader is actually true.
John McCain, who was knocked out of the 2000 Republican primary by an ugly racial smear implying he had an "interracial" daughter from "interracial sex," thought that the race card would certainly defeat Barack Obama. After all, he was white, had simply adopted a person of color, and it was enough to undo him. Here is Obama, a black man, with a foreign-sounding name, with a black wife. Certainly most Americans, even ones who disavow racism, would be uncomfortable with that.
He thought the winds of history would be at this back. People who looked like him have ruled America from the beginning. Hillary Clinton is one thing. But he is a war hero. A POW. A man. A white man. Hey, with his Bangledeshi-born daughter he might even get some votes of color. With his immigration policy he might even get the Latino vote.
He thought: It is my turn. Just like Hillary Clinton did. Both she and McCain felt that they'd been standing in line. And it is true that both of them have suffered unjustly at the hands of their own kind. McCain, perhaps, should have been the candidate in 2000. Who knows what would have happened differently if he had been? Hillary Clinton worked hard and survived one of the worst witch hunts in American politics in the 1990's. Both of them felt it was their moment to shine. The universe owed them. This is what McCain thought. But it's not the big picture.
But the people Barack Obama represents, progressives, liberals, people of color, women, bisexual and gay and lesbian people, working class people, average Americans without billions to defend, have been waiting a lot longer than 15 or 25 years for their day. We have been waiting for hundreds of years. Our time is now. Our moment is now. We have waited long enough.