McCain is McBrilliant. Really.

For those regular readers of this site (and I know there must be a couple of you out there, hopefully), you may have noticed a changed in tone on some of our posts over the last week or two. I readily admit that I have been personally incensed by the selection of Sarah Palin to the GOP ticket. While this may be hard to believe given my own partisan affiliation, and the sharp edge of all of many of my posts, I really believe her selection goes beyond politics, and that Palin is grossly unqualified to the point that her election would be a danger to the future of this country. For that reason, I have found it hard to be precisely politically balanced in my tone and substance. I feel that strongly.

All of that being said, credit has to be given where it is due. There is no question that today, John McCain is a genius. He is a genius because he took a huge political gamble, and it paid off. Big time.

For just a moment, all my personal objections aside, the grizzled political hack in me has to give the old dude and his top aides a tip of the cap. McCain and his team took a boring, dry campaign, and have seized and held all of the energy and momentum in this circus we call the presidential general election campaign. Sarah Palin has single-handedly brought John McCain's campaign to life, and has knotted this race completely even -- if not better -- in the span of less than two weeks. It has brought the loyal Republicans unable to get fully behind McCain out of the woodwork and into the arena.

Furthermore, I have to grudgingly acknowledge that McCain's use of Palin is almost perfectly mimicing the Obama affect: as basically a celebrity, Palin is getting all of the attention, even more than Obama, and as a result all of the major lines of attack -- some of them legitimate, some of them not -- will not stick to the Teflon Alaskan. Right now, Obama is feeling exactly how Hillary Clinton felt when her legitimate criticisms of Obama were drowned out be celebrity political coverage. With that in mind, it's hard for me (in a political sense) to fault McCain for appearing everywhere he goes with Palin. She's the star now, and I too would ride her for every vote and poll point she is worth. Lord knows that before Palin hit the scene, McCain could not draw flies to a rally.

So, while I find Palin's selection personally insulting, incredibly dangerous to the country, and quite frankly, embarrassing considering Palin's inexperience, spotty history, and likely stupidity, for this post, I salute it for its singular political brilliance. McCain risked it all, and at least for now, he looks like a genius.

It also does not hurt that he followed my advice to a T.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled Palin coverage.