My greatest fear about McCain…

…as a Republican nominee for President was always that I thought he would say something outlandish and stupid that would cost him the election. I never really thought it would be something he did, or rather someone he picked, that cost him the election.

But by now, even with her generally admirable performance in the debates behind her, it’s clear that the Sarah Palin pick has become John McCain’s Harriet Miers moment, the moment when many (yes, certainly not all, but enough of them) conservatives threw in the towel on the Bush Administration. Such a shame; she could have been an absolutely brilliant pick in 2012, when America will have just woken up with an Obamania hangover.

So with that depressing elegy out of the way, it’s time to start focusing on what we can expect from an Obama Administration. In today’s Doublethink Online, Joshua Xiong argues that to become the transformational president he’s selling himself as, Obama will have to rebel against his own party, something for which he has shown zero inclination in his political career so far.