The whole “experience” debate is silly. Under our system of government, there is only one job that gives you both executive and foreign policy experience, and that’s the one McCain and Obama are running for. Nevertheless, it’s a hardy perennial: If your opponent is a governor, you accuse him of lacking foreign policy experience. If he or she is a member of Congress, you say this person has never run anything. And if, by any chance, your opponent has done both, you say that he or she is a “professional politician.” When Republicans aren’t complaining about someone’s lack of experience, they are calling for term limits.

That’s why the important point about Palin’s lack of experience isn’t about Palin. It’s about McCain. And the question is not how his choice of Palin might complicate his ability to use the “experience” issue, or whether he will have to drop experience as an issue. It’s not even about the proper role of experience as an issue. In fact, it’s not about experience at all. It’s about honesty. The question should be whether McCain—and all the other Republicans who have been going on for months about Obama’s dangerous lack of foreign policy experience—ever meant a word of it. And the answer is apparently not.

Which is not to say that experience doesn’t matter, but it’s difficult to say how it matters when you come at it from different angles. And in this case, having none can also be seen as a virtue. What should not be overlooked is the dishonesty of using that argument to attack Obama and then choosing Palin. Even worse is to claim that somehow her experience as governor, here, is more relevant than his, in Illinois and DC.

If this all blows up, she’ll be seen for what she is – a pawn in the game. If it doesn’t blow up, she may rise to the occasion and make a name for herself. I hope neither of those things happen.

I like to say that Obama may be relatively underqualified compared to others, Palin is unqualified, and those are two different things.

I’ve been doing my own musings on race and this election