When I woke up Friday morning, I was surprised to learn, via John Dickerson’s twitter message, that John McCain had picked Sarah Palin for his vice presidential nominee.

My first thought was, uh-oh. Women voters. Disgruntled Hillary supporters. Small town undecideds. What a smart pick.

Sarah Palin, who, at 44, is three years younger than Barack Obama and 28 years younger than John McCain, has an unusual bio for a politician. She was a high school basketball star (she should go one-on-one with Obama). She finished second place in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant. She has five children, one who is in the Army and is shipping out to Iraq in a few weeks. Another has Down syndrome. Palin was a two-term mayor of a city of about 6,000. As governor, she was both popular and successful. She fought against corruption and pork-barrel spending (she even sold a government-owned private jet on EBay). She’s also pro-life and supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. Like McCain, she can claim to be both conservative and a maverick.

Of course, she’s been a governor for less than two years. Her government experience is in Alaska, a state that’s as different and remote as any in the Union. She has exactly zero foreign policy experience. Will this matter? After all, she’s only running for vice president.

In a weird way, Palin’s inexperience matters more than Obama’s. Obama will rely on advisors and his VP Joe Biden to fill in his gaps. And if, God forbid, something should happen to him, then an experienced Biden will take his place. John McCain, on the other hand, may not need any help with foreign policy. But if, God forbid, something should happen to him, then an inexperienced Palin will take his place. The fact that McCain is 72 only makes this more of a possibility. It goes without saying that a vice president who takes over for a president would face a huge crisis.

I was curious to get a woman’s point of view, so I called my good friend Katie. Katie was a Barack Obama supporter, but she’s also a big fan of Hillary’s and tends to take attacks on Hillary as personal as any PUMAwould.

Katie was not impressed by McCain’s pick. She saw it as being purely political, a cynical attempt to pander to women. She was particularly angered by Palin’s reference to Hillary in her speech: “It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.” It suggested, Katie argued, that Hillary only got those 18 million votes because she’s a woman; that it had nothing to do with Hillary’s policy proposals, hard work, or legislative record.

I think she’s putting it a bit too strongly — after all, being governor of any state is nothing to sneeze at. And it’s not like Hillary achieved everything on her own — she was building on the popularity of her husband’s presidency. It is, nonetheless, a fair point. For Palin to try to claim the Hillary Clinton mantle diminishes Hillary’s achievement, and risks turning off Hillary’s supporters who think her success was achieved despite her being a woman, not because of it.

Noam Scheiber had a similar conversation with his mother. Nate Silver notes that skepticism of Palin is high, and even higher among women.

On the other hand, support for Hillary among women was at its strongest when Hillary was being attacked. Will the same hold true for Palin? What will happen if Biden zings her in the debate? Or if Chris Mathews says something about her being nice to look at but unqualified (kinda like this)? Will she gain sympathy? If anything, the Palin gambit will close the umbrage gap — the McCain campaign will be able to take offense to just as many things as the Obama camp will.

By Sunday, it was clear that the Palin pick did, in fact, have merits that had nothing to do with female voters. Conservatives and other Republicans were so enthusiastic about her that they donated seven million dollars to the McCain campaign in a single day. The next day, more than 17,000 people turned out for a McCain / Palin rally. McCain’s decision had gotten him two important things right off the bat: money and news coverage. Those are two things that Barack Obama gets a lot of and pre-Palin McCain did not.

The downside is, of course, all of the shoes yet to drop. Already we’ve had a pregnant 17-year-old daughter, a 20-year-old DWI, and some half-scandal involving a fired state trooper. All of these on their own don’t mean much and their relevance to the campaign is questionable. But they remind us that McCain, Biden, and even Obama have been on the national stage long enough to uncover things like Reverend Wright and the Keating Five. Palin has not.

McCain knows how hard this election is going to be to win. He knew that he needed to present himself as a reform politician, as opposed to defender of the status quo. Palin allows Republicans to feel that they, too, can be on the right side of history. If Palin comes off as another Dan Quayle, McCain will lose. But if she comes off as a Barack Obama, then McCain has a shot.

–Hillel Aron