Don't be fooled.

Sarah Palin, the first-term governor of Alaska and now presumptive Republican vice-presidential candidate, is as smart as tacks. She's young and she has legs -- of the actual and political sort. That John McCain chose her as his running mate is one of the smartest and deeply cynical acts of pure politics at its very worst I've seen in my lifetime.

Although I wept through Hillary Clinton's speech the other night, thinking of the old show tune This Nearly Was Mine, I'm an Obama supporter now, full weight. And if John McCain thinks he can get us to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, let me say, he is no wizard worth his salt. Yes, Sarah Palin may indeed by the double-reverse Barack Obama, she is no Hillary Clinton. Although she is not going to be the vice-president, she is the genuine article, and even if you are a wistful Republican, you know that. She didn't get elected senator in a state where almost no one lives, but in New York. She fought the good fight and for my money, she would have made a splendid leader.

That said, pulling Sarah Palin out of a hat is not going to make John McCain younger or more appealing -- not unless we unite and agree to have a national pre-frontal lobotomy.

John McCain is not going to end this war. Your son is ten now but sometime, he will be eighteen. John McCain is not going to turn green. Alternative energy interests him about as much as the number of Americans who own homes. John McCain is a war hero and a good man, but he is not going to raise up a staggering nation and find a way for all our children to have access to health care.

Choosing a woman was good politics. Please see through that screen of smoke and mirrors. Behind Oz, the great and terrible, who would stay in Iraq a hundred years, is a man pulling levers, hoping you won't notice. Choosing a known woman as his running mate changes nothing substative. It's just a better fireworks display.

There are plenty of women in the United States who hate or fear everything that every good woman and every good man stands for -- the future of families, the hope of peace, the salvation of the poor.

Ann Coulter is a pretty woman, too. She's also smart.

 She is not married. She has no children -- that she knows of. 

As a novelist, I have to ask of each of my characters, what's your stake in this?

As yourself that now.