The Shine comes off Sarah Palin

It is now several weeks since John McCain unleashed a political earthquake by naming the little-known governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate. In retrospect, his reasoning seems clear: as things stood, he was trailing Barack Obama in all polls, and given that Obama had just nominated Senate heavyweight Joe Biden as his running mate, something was needed to shake things up.

And shake things up she did. After the Republican convention, polls for the first time showed McCain leading. White women, already bitter about the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primaries, rallied around a new standard bearer, with a swing in that demographic of twenty points in a week. The religious right, meanwhile, which had been sceptical about McCain, now had a new icon.

However, more recently, questions are beginning to emerge. Despite all the claims by the McCain camp that Palin represented a fellow maverick, it has become very hard to defend some of Palin's credentials. In particular, it emerged that, despite her vaunted fiscal credentials, she requested millions in federal assistance as mayor of Wasilla, and was a big proponent of the Gravina Island "Bridge to Nowhere", before it became clear that the project was sunk.

Similarly, in terms of supposed foreign policy credentials, Sarah Palin listed the countries she has visited: Canada, Ireland, Kuwait, Iraq and Germany. In and of itself this is not particularly impressive, but when it became clear that her visit to Ireland was a refuelling stop at Shannon, and that she only went as far as the Iraqi border with Kuwait, not only does her resume become 40% thinner, but she can, with some justification, be accused of playing fast and loose with the truth.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, her status as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, which has pleased the right wing of the Republican party no end, may backfire among moderates. While most Americans may not fully believe in Darwinian evolution, most aren't Young Earth Creationists either, and oppose the idea of teaching it in schools. Similarly, it becomes very hard for John McCain to bolster his claims to be pro-stem cells and emission capping when his running mate has been on record as being opposed to both.

John McCain took a gamble with Sarah Palin. He picked her on the basis of a single meeting, a fact which in itself raises questions about his judgement. However, the polls showed he needed to gamble. Whether or not it pays off remains to be seen.