Plainly Palin

John McCain, the 72-year-old presumptive Republican candidate in the US presidential elections, made a maverick political move last Thursday by placing a woman almost half his age on the vice presidential ticket.

Pretty, sassy, 44-year-old Sarah Palin, it is hoped, will weave her magic to divert female voters, especially the ones that voted for Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries.

No one really knows if that will happen until the elections are over and a winning party is announced. Until then of course the very private family life of Sarah Palin is going to be fair game and her dirty laundry not just washed in public but torn to shreds.

Palin, a mother of five children, is currently under the microscope because her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant. The one common question is naturally: If she can’t handle her children how is she going to look after the interests of the nation?

A typical question, I say, because she is a woman. Had the VP nominee been a man it would never have come up – or his wife would be blamed for being a bad mother.

Quite a few of my younger female colleagues also pointed out that, "Young people do stupid things. Should parents really be punished for the sins of their children?"

Sarah Palin is a former beauty queen and may appear to be a light-weight foil to John McCain.

Those in the know however, are telling us that she is a true political savant. She is a former mayor, a former governor, a former chief of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Disgusted with the old boys network and the back scratching that went on between them she took them on with a savage competitiveness and won. She knows how to appeal to the voting public and she knows how to win. That harmless little girl look is simply a mask.

All in all, the coming election is going to be very interesting. It won’t matter if the Republicans or the Democrats win.

That will be decided by the voting American public.

There will, however, be quite a few firsts – the oldest president, the youngest vice-president, the first African-American president, the first woman vice-president and that will make watching it closely very worthwhile.