The political world is abuzz with the seemingly bizarre selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential pick, but it actually makes perfect sense. Imagine being a party insider who has been in this game a long time and imagine what the spectacle of Mile High Stadium would have meant to you. Barack Obama had people lined up for six miles to get into the park and you can’t fill 10,000 seats for McCain’s VP rollout. The state by state polling in the key states looks daunting. So what do you do? You punt.

The Republicans had two choices, they could have selected Willard Romney, who would have put Nevada, Colorado and Michigan in serious play, and made a serious run for November- or they punt this one and put the VP spotlight on a new face to freshen up a very, very tired party. Consider the dismal presidential crop they had this year- McCain crashes and burns, but triumphs because, amazingly, his was the only beating heart left in the wreckage. If you are a Republican insider you can’t be thrilled with the prospect of anyone from that field trying it on again in 2012.

There are a few prospects on the Republican team, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and South Dakota senator John Thune among them, but both are blow dried white guys who are on their way to the top in the party anyway. But when the Democrats have run such serious and diverse candidates in an increasingly diverse country- with more in the bullpen, the Republicans have to come up with someone besides another Ken doll. And so, enter Sarah Palin, the party’s statement that “we are more than white guys.” Forget any blather about trying to get disgruntled Hillary voters, no one serious is counting on that. This is about the next generation of the Republican party.

Last night was a milestone in the storied life of William Jefferson Clinton. There had been a concern in the Clinton camp that the former president might be met with a luke warm response from the convention floor, and might even hear some boo’s. It had, afterall, been a bruising primary, far more heated and contentious than any before it by virtue of the historic nature of both candidates, and Clinton himself had many unfortunate moments that did indeed damage his relationship with many Democrats. Most notable, of course, was his observation that Jesse Jackson had won the South Carolina primary, and the unfortunate implications that were drawn, and nakedly exploited by the Obama campaign, from it.

Clinton’s real problem throughout the primary season was not simply that his wife was a candidate, but that he truly believed in his bones that should her opponent prevail he would not be able to win the general election in November. To his eye, Barack Obama was a supercharged ego with a messianic complex whose routine played well in certain venues but could never make it on the big stage. Clinton found himself in the unenviable position of having to decide whether to unleash the hard stuff that he could see coming on a fellow Democrat or wait and watch the Republicans do it. And as a former president he had an exalted position in the party that would make such a foray into political hardball all the more unseemly and even threaten that position. Clinton answered the dilemma true to form, and out came the scrappy campaigner, but it did not take long before the howls began. When he described Obama’s campaign as “a fairy tale” it suddenly turned ugly. The “first black President” was faced with charges of racism, charges that not only shocked him but sliced painfully into what he perceived to be the core of his being. As those charges reverberated in the media, he watched as his wife’s campaign unraveled under the weight of breathtaking mismanagement (her staff, for example, were reportedly not even aware that Texas also held a caucus alongside their primary until it was way too late to get organized). And so, with each passing day, Bill Clinton watched his wife sink and the network he’s so painstakingly built over decades collapse while, in his view, an ill-equipped new party leader had taken over and was poised to squander a golden political opportunity and instead steer the party boat towards the rocks of presidential defeat. To his horror, Bill Clinton became Sonny Liston to Obama’s Cassius Clay.

No one likes defeat, but for Bill Clinton it’s sheer torture. With the convention looming his choice was to either distance himself from the Obama campaign that he felt tarnished his name and was doomed to failure, positioning himself and his wife for 2012, or could do his duty. In the end, duty was the only realistic option. In what was probably the hardest pill of all to swallow, Clinton had to stand before the convention and surrender the mantle of party leadership of the party he ruled over for almost two decades. But, in doing so, regardless of what happens in November, he regained some of his lost stature, and looked again…well…presidential.

The Obama campaign had two choices in picking their vice presidential nominee. They could have doubled down on Obama and taken a cohort who was also young, new, bright and ready to take over for the new generation- or, take an experienced Washington hand to temper the newness in a way that says “we’re pragmatic.” The Rove Squad was ready no matter who they took, ready to blather on about lack of experience and readiness with someone new or to squeal that Obama was abandoning his “change” message and admitting his weakness by taking an old timer. Given the dearth of other options for the Rove Squad, the Obama folks had to figure this would become the main thrust of the campaign against them.

No one who’s watched Barack Obama over the last year is likely to think he felt himself lacking in any political arena or that he would make a vice presidential choice in order to get help in matters of substance or policy- or anything else for that matter. The question became one of perception rather than reality, and you can be sure the vast Democratic party establishment was in favor of seeing one of it’s own on the ticket for self-serving reasons as well as electoral ones. They are no more keen than the Republicans to be left behind. Regardless, while Obama surely wished to reinforce his own candidacy and message the way Bill Clinton did with Al Gore, there simply was no Gore out there. Obama had no “partner in crime” as it were.

The reality is that Barack Obama’s movement is entirely about him and no one else. It’s great strength, and it’s potentially lethal liability, is that it is almost exclusively a cult of personality. It is not just about Iraq or health care, it is an article of faith about Obama’s ability to “change Washington” across the board. One potential choice on the “change” front, despite being a 2004 retread, would have been the born-again John Edwards, but Mr. Edwards screwed himself out of contention. The list pretty much ended after that. Virginia governor Tim Kaine was also much mentioned as a new face of change, but could never have been considered very seriously. Important though Virginia is, and as popular and smart as Kaine is, his total lack of charisma couldn’t overcome his thin resume as mayor of Richmond, Lt. Governor and a couple years as governor. Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius could never have been “the other woman.” New Mexico governor Bill Richardson is too sweaty and uncomfortable in his own skin to be viable, and like Sebelius, would have been a direct assault on the Clintons. Other blowdried mid-westerners like Evan Bayh or Ted Strickland, despite being relatively unknown faces on the national stage, embody the boring status-quo Obama’s message is counter to with no upside.

So, with the field of compatible, “change” options whittled down to nothing, Obama had no choice but to look to the establishment. Hillary Clinton, of course, was never a serious thought. Even if Bill’s murky finances had somehow passed muster, which was highly unlikely to put it mildly, Obama could never have tolerated a shadow presidency in his own White House. While the names of a few House members were bandied about, none had the profile needed. So, subtract the governors and the house members, and there is Joe Biden staring you in the face. Where you could easily imagine Tim Kaine, Chris Dodd, Jack Reed, et al in jumpsuits with elevator repair logos on the back, Biden has the height and look of a president. Biden can also give a speech with conviction, and will most certainly provide a formidable test for any of McCain’s VP options.

And so, the Obama campaign will now work to employ Biden’s strengths- his aggressive style and working class roots- and hope he can chew the ass off McCain’s VP, look good in flannel in Pennsylvania and Ohio and go seventy days without another of his infamous blathers.

One of the classic American political anecdotes goes that coming off a plane during his 1952 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Adlai Stephenson saw a man holding a sign proclaiming that he was the “Candidate of the Thinking American,” to which Stevenson famously replied, “Oh god, now I know I’ve lost.” Another version of the story has a woman reciting the same line to him, and he replying “too bad there aren’t enough of them.” However it might have happened, the story survives like all great anecdotes because it illustrates, accurately or not, a much bigger story. In this case, it is indeed accurate. The Illinois governor was considered a thoughtful intellectual, and was famously labeled an “egghead.” Despite being a great public speaker, he won only nine states and lost the Electoral College vote 442 to 89.

In the over half a century since that election, the Democratic Party has essentially re-nominated Mr. Stephenson every four years and has won the White House, really, only three times. The first was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy barely squeaked by, and twice with Bill Clinton. Lyndon Johnson’s win in 1964 was in memory of the slain Kennedy, Carter in 1976 was a reaction to Watergate. Neither man could have come even close less to winning the White House were it not for those tumultuous events (and neither, of course, was re-elected). While Al Gore won in 2000 it never should have been close enough to be stolen. As Clinton accurately, if indelicately, observed, Gore should never have “lost three debates to a retard.”

What Clinton and Kennedy shared, besides an infamous appetite for risky and casual sex with strangers, is the quality lacking in the others in the roll call of Democratic presidential nominees since Adlai- ruthlessness. Politics in the Kennedy and Clinton clans has always been a blood sport and ruthlessness resonates with the American people. The simple truth that so many Democrats and high brown intellectuals seem to avoid getting is this: Americans love winners and we excuse those who do underhanded things to win. Winning is the thing.

Consider these examples. George W. Bush was nothing short of disgusting in his robophone attacks in South Carolina on John McCain’s adopted daughter. Even worse were the attacks upon Max Cleland in his bid for re-election to the United States Senate. Cleland, a decorated veteran who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam was portrayed as lacking in love for America. Or, of course, the Swift Boat episode. In all three examples, among many others, lies and sleaze were freely exercised and most Americans know it full well. But we don’t really care. The winners won and there it is. Whining is for losers.

Herein lies the biggest potential landmine for Barack Obama. His brand of new, hopeful, sleaze-free politics that believes in the smarts and the wisdom of the American people is tailor made for the sleaze merchants. While he’s nobly praising “John McCain’s service to our country” they are busy trying to turn him- literally- into the Anti-Christ. If he wants to win, Obama had better break the Adlai mold and embrace the words of the sage American philosopher W.C. Fields, “anything worth having is worth cheating for.”

If you think there is turmoil on television as pundits exasperate themselves, and us, trying to scoop the vice presidential picks, it’s nothing compared to what is going on in the campaigns. Oars are splashing wildly in both the Obama and McCain camps as party hacks blather tirelessly not only to promote their opinions, but names that will benefit their own careers as well. The longer it goes on the more divisive it gets. The candidates themselves, however, are engaged in a stare down of their own, and Obama has the upper hand and can put some serious distance between himself and McCain with a brilliant move. In the short term, McCain can only hope not to make things worse for his own chances- but for the rest of his party the stakes for the longer term are much higher. The Republican party is going to get an overhaul, and whoever gets on McCain’s ticket will be in pole position to lead it.

The core problem for McCain, and for the wing of the Republican party that has ruled for the last eight years, is that he has to choose the oily and distasteful former Massachusetts’s governor Willard “Mitt” Romney. To do otherwise would be seen by the rest of the party, and rightly so, as flushing away his best chance of victory in November. Not only does Romney boast what many claim to be economic bona fides from his days at Bain Capital- bona fides the bumbling McCain clearly lacks- but he also brings hard electoral vote numbers. Owing to his Mormon faith, with Romney, McCain has a strong shot at two key battleground states- Nevada and Colorado, and he would be poised to get decisive bonus points in hotly contested Michigan as well. All blather aside, there is no one else in the field who can bring anything close to what Romney brings to the table (no one can really help McCain with Evangelicals at this point, for example). It’s literally a no-brainer. The problem for McCain is two fold, however. First, by taking Romney he not only de facto admits weakness on the economy, but also that he is not “enough” by himself and has to form a coalition to have a viable chance- the same reason Obama never entertained Clinton as a serious choice. He literally resigns what small claim he had to leadership of the party. The second problem, of course, is that McCain would rather lick the north end of a southbound pig than even stand next to Romney on a platform- and even worse, put Romney in the undermining position of being the heir apparent. Even should he win in November, with Romney on the ticket, McCain would look more like a steward expected not to seek a second term.

Obama does not have this problem. Unlike McCain, he is clearly in command of his party and no one is even thinking about, let alone looking around, for a successor. Those who pushed for Clinton have long since given up and there is no one on the horizon, Clinton included, who can bring to Obama what Romney brings to McCain- raw electoral votes. The worst pick Obama could make would be Delaware senator Joe Biden. To do so would admit that he needs the advice of a daddy figure and would only make him look young and wanting and open the door for an endless avenue of attack ads. It would also, needless to say, derail any “change” message he wanted to pursue. No one is more of a Washington insider than Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972. Just slightly less bad would be a selection from the moth eaten pack of senatorial colleagues- Dodd, Reed or the mind-bendingly boring Evan Bayh who could cut in a ticket line for a Led Zeppelin reunion concert without being noticed. Obama’s choice is much easier because, as anyone who’s seriously watched him over the last year, he doesn’t feel that any part of his game is lacking. As he did in the gym in Afghanistan, he’s clearly ready to take the three point shot himself. Look for him to surprise us by passing on the establishment and going with someone much like himself, a new face who can reinforce his brand and authentically sign on to the Obama movement. As we have seen already, where Obama is concerned, on the basketball court and off, balls are never in short supply.

McCain too might decide to live or die on his own terms and go with someone he likes and who actually shares his vision- someone who he could actually eat in the presence of, like Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. Doing so, however, would be a last act of defiance and would require a display of courage he’s not shown since he crashed and burned in 2000. With his face still reeking of Jerry Falwell’s backside, and in desperate need of party cash to make a serious run, look for McCain to knuckle under and become Romney’s mule to 2012.