In his choice of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential running mate, John McCain has once again demonstrated a stunning lack of intellectual depth as well as of political judgment. The only comparable recent case I can think of offhand is that of Harriet Miers, whose 2005 Supreme Court nomination by George W. Bush failed due to her total lack of relevant experience or knowledge, a major embarrassment to the Bush administration and a highly negative reflection on Bush's own decision-making skills. John McCain's choice of Palin is a clear attempt to pander to woman Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries and whom McCain hopes will now vote for him insead of Obama. The problem for McCain is that, beyond pandering value, Palin brings as little to recommend her for the vice-presidency as Harriet Miers brought to recommend her for the Supreme Court.

Elected governor of Alaska less than two years ago, Sarah Palin has scarcely half the experience in that high office that Barack Obama has in the US Senate. Previously, Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town with a population of less than 8000 (while Barack Obama served a constituency of 210,000 as an Illinois state senator). Wasilla is the adopted hometown of the Idaho-born Palin, who attended and played basketball for Wasilla High School and was elected Miss Wasilla before placing second in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant. Palin has a Bachelor's degree in journalism and worked as a sportscaster before entering local politics in Wasilla.

McCain's choice of Palin for VP is as hollow and ill-conceived as Bush's choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. As the running mate of a 72-year-old presidential candidate whose mental acuity seems to fade almost by the day, Sarah Palin could hardly be expected to step in and take over as president should something timely happen to McCain. With precious little experience even in state politics, Palin has zero experience in national politics and zero background in foreign affairs or national security. Finding Republican women governors and senators with more experience than Palin would have been easy for McCain; finding one with less experience would been the difficult task

Palin also enters the presidential race with a ready-made scandal brewing in her home state. Accused of using her position to force the firing of a state police officer (and ex-brother-in-law) for strictly personal reasons, and of firing her public safety commissioner for refusing to participate, Palin is currently under investigation by a bipartisan Alaska legislative council for abuse of power. I look forward to seeing more on this in the national media over the weeks to come.

Palin's lack of experience will of course become apparent when she has to face Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debate scarcely a month from now - hardly enough time for her to make up for the vast knowledge gap between herself and her Democratic opponent. While it will be a little sad to watch poor Sarah get disassembled by Biden (certainly far less satisfying to watch than McCain being taken apart by Obama), it will be a reflection on McCain's judgment America needs to see.

I don't need to repeat the accolades Barack Obama has received on his acceptance speech the final evening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Suffice to say that neither those who love Obama's soaring oratory nor those hungry for hard, specific detail were disappointed. The climax of a highly successful convention with all the right kinds of drama and none of the wrong kind, Obama's speech shot him and running mate Joe Biden out of Denver on a rocket straight to the White House. Obama's choice of the tough, experienced senator from Delaware seems also to have been a home run: a ticket, not of making up for weakness as Republicans have suggested, but of combined strength.

John McCain, on the other hand, has made the choice of a vice-presidential running mate on the same basis he has made all of his political decisions in this campaign: pandering. In his choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, McCain is clearly pandering to woman Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries and whom McCain hopes will now vote for him insead of Obama. Stupid right-wingers, without a doubt, will proclaim loudly that McCain "hit it out of the park" with  this choice, and that Democrats had better be running scared. They will think what they like, of course (if what right-wingers do in their little heads can truly be called "thinking"), but a closer look at Palin reveals a choice that could hardly have been a more superficial one. Sarah Palin has scarcely half the experience as governor of Alaska that Barack Obama has in the US Senate, and before becoming governor less than two years ago was the mayor of a town with a population of around 8000. Before that she was a sportscaster.

As the running mate of a 72-year-old presidential candidate whose mental acuity seems to fade almost by the day, Sarah Palin is hardly prepared to step in and take over as president. With precious little experience even in state politics, Palin has no experience whatsoever in national politics, and no background in foreign affairs. Finding Republican women governors and senators with more experience than Palin would have been easy for McCain; finding one with less experience would been the difficult task. It is obvious that McCain chose Palin not on the basis of any qualification to serve as president on day two if necessary, but only because she is a woman.

This will all become apparent, of course, when Gov. Palin has to face Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debate scarcely a month from now - hardly enough time for her to make up for the vast knowledge gap between herself and her Democratic opponent. It will be a little sad to watch poor Sarah get disassembled by Biden (certainly far less satisfying to watch than McCain being taken apart by Obama), but it will be a reflection on McCain's judgment America needs to see.

Speaking last night at the Democratic National Convention, senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry delivered precisely the kind of blistering attack on John McCain we need to see more of from Democratic leaders. For far too long, leading Democrats have been far too soft on McCain, effusively praising his war record and offering only meek or vague criticism even as McCain and the Republicans have launched a barrage of vicious and dishonest personal attacks on Barack Obama. The time for praising old heroes has passed. It is time now to attack McCain on all fronts and to take the old man down.

Kerry's attack on John McCain last night was exactly what it should have been: direct, explicit, specific, and personal. Describing McCain's campaign tactics as "insulting," "pathetic," and "desperate," Kerry took aim even at McCain's age and experience by saying that when we elect a president we should do so on the basis of "judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth." McCain's judgment and character - or rather lack thereof - are precisely what Democrats should be taking aim at, as Kerry did relentlessly throughout his speech, refreshingly free of undue praise or softened rhetoric.

Earlier in the day, California senator Barbara Boxer made a few equally strong remarks on McCain's personal temperament, suggesting that McCain's angry outbursts on the Senate floor are evidence of unfitness to serve in such a critical position as that of president. I have long felt that Democrats should be more aggressive in going after McCain's personal character and fitness to serve, particularly given the personal nature of McCain's recent attacks on Obama. McCain's out-of-control temper, his grotesque attempts at humor followed by adolescent giggling at his own stupid jokes, his spotty memory, and his staggering personal dishonesty should all be considered fair game for attack. John McCain has the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old, the mental clarity of an Alzheimer's patient, and few of the characteristics of a competent adult. These facts need to be pointed out to voters, again and again and again.

Meanwhile, as I have suggested, praise for McCain from Democrats needs to stop. If I have to sit and listen to one more Democrat sing loving odes to what a "great American hero" and "maverick" John McCain is, I think I'm going to puke. John McCain does not deserve praise. He deserves relentless attack and defeat.

John McCain is a diplomatic disaster just begging to happen. A more generous observer than I might excuse his frequent factual gaffes - repeated references to countries and borders that don't exist, forgetting that Sunni al-Qaeda and Shiite Iran are sworn enemies, putting events such as Iraq's "Anbar Awakening" and the US military "surge" in the wrong chronological order - as the normal mental slippage anyone might experience while they near their twilight years. What cannot be so easily overlooked are those comments and actions of McCain's which suggest that he really is a rather angry and hateful old man, not to mention something of a loose cannon on the deck.

Take for example his efforts at humor involving the fantasized slaughter of Iranian civilians: His singing of "bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" back during the primaries and his more recent suggestion that exporting cigarettes to the Iranians might be a good way of killing them, neither of which should be coming out of the mouth of a prospective president. Following the "bomb, bomb Iran" incident McCain's lack of tact was made even more painfully obvious when he callously refused to admit any error in offending the Iranian people by suggesting that they would be better off dead. Whatever we might think of Iran's rulers, the Iranian people are not our enemies, and making jokes about killing them with bombs and cigarettes is no way to win "hearts and minds" in the Middle East or anywhere else.

McCain's remarks about killing Iranians echo previous comments made by him regarding the people of Vietnam. "I hate the gooks," McCain told reporters during his 2000 primary campaign, "I will hate them as long as I live." However rooted these comments may be in McCain's own war experiences, and however excusable they may be for any private citizen likewise scarred by war, they simply cannot be overlooked in a prospective president: the stakes are too high, the need too critical for a competent Diplomat-in-Chief in the Oval Office. Taken in the context of his later remarks about killing Iranians, they would also seem to suggest a fairly callous and cold-blooded attitude on McCain's part toward peoples he regards as enemies. Made once - and on the basis of such deep-seated hostility as that McCain appears to harbor toward certain peoples of the earth - such remarks may all too easily be made again, and again, and again.

Then we have the matter of McCain's infamous temper, such as when he reacted to disagreement on immigration reform from fellow Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas by screaming, "F*ck you!"; such as when he called fellow Republican senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico an "a**hole"; and such as when he called fellow Republican senator Charles Grassley of Iowa a "f*cking jerk." Keep in mind that these incidents occured, not in private or among political enemies, but on the floor of the United States Senate among fellow Republicans; and could therefore just as easily happen, say, at a G-8 Summit or a gathering of NATO leaders. How would it look on the world stage for a red-faced, whited-haired John McCain first to get all the countries wrong, then to make jokes about bombing one of them, then finally to blow his stack and call one of their presidents a "f*cking jerk"?

Indeed McCain's outbursts and insults have already, on occasion, occured before the eyes not only of America but of the world. His hatred of "gooks" and his desire to kill Iranians have both been widely noted in the world press, and would likely precede him on any presidential tour of Asia or the Middle East. While our French allies were fighting alongside US troops in Afghanistan, McCain had the following to say: "You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it" - not only insulting, but irrelevant, and quite possibly a reason for pro-American French president Nicholas Sarkozy's enthusiastic endorsement of Barack Obama. Once in a 1987 meeting at the height of Central American tensions, according to fellow Republican senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, McCain reached across the table and physically assaulted a Nicaraguan representative, seizing him by his shirt collar. "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine...," Cochran later said when endorsing Mitt Romney for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, "...He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

If McCain worries even his fellow Republicans, then how worried should the rest of us be? 

There was a time when I honestly believed that John McCain might actually hold true to his promise to wage a clean and respectable campaign against Barack Obama for the high office of President of the United States. There was a time when I bore McCain no personal enmity despite my political allegiance to his opponent. Perhaps this is only because I didn't know as much about McCain as I know now; perhaps I had been told about McCain's "maverick" status so many times by the media that I actually believed it; perhaps I hoped that McCain's experience with Bush-Rove tactics in 2000 would prevent him on moral grounds from employing the same tactics in 2008. Whatever the case, that time has now passed.

John McCain is attempting to win the White House by dragging the 2008 presidential election into the same pit of Rovian filth that won for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. McCain is running a campaign based, not on issues and ideas, but on cheap shots and negative personal innuendo. Clearly unable to compete intellectually with Obama, McCain has deliberately sought to lower the level of discourse in this contest to that of the locker room and the back-alley brawl. While Obama strives to maintain the high ground, McCain wallows in sewage and asks the rest of us to join him. If this general election contest has taken a hard negative turn of late, it is entirely McCain's doing. It didn't have to be this way.

John McCain deserves no mercy from Democrats. He deserves no respect, no personal or professional consideration, no hero treatment. He deserves to be hit hard, again and again and again, until there's nothing left of his campaign but a bloodied corpse. He deserves to have every personal failing drawn out for all to see, every bit of dirty laundry from the McCain past taken out and waved before the cameras, every skeleton exumed. He deserves to be pummeled by Obama in the upcoming presidential debates until he is reduced to a helpless, quivering blob of hairy cottage cheese. He deserves to have his infamous temper provoked, and to be baited into making a public ass of himself just as he has done so many times before. He deserves all this, and more - much, much more. If in the end his Senate career is destroyed along with his presidential bid, so much the better.

When John McCain tells Americans that he has always been a passionate supporter of civil rights, Americans need to be reminded that McCain voted against the federal Martin Luther King (MLK) holiday in 1983, that he supported a Republican governor who rescinded Arizona's state MLK holiday in 1987, that he voted to eliminate federal funding for the MLK Federal Holiday Commission in 1994, and that he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 no less than four times. Only days ago, however, McCain claimed to "have  supported hundreds of pieces of legislation which would help Americans obtain an equal opportunity" and to have been instrumental in "fighting for the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday in my state." John McCain is a liar.

When John McCain tries to convince Americans that he has always been right on the war in Iraq, Americans need to be reminded that back in 2003 McCain told us victory would be achieved easily and quickly, and that US troops would be greeted in Iraq as liberators. When John McCain tells Americans that he is a reformer, Americans need to be reminded of his role in the "Keating Five" scandal, of his more recent improprieties as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee with corporate telecom lobbyists, and indeed of the fact that his campaign is entirely run by lobbyists. When John McCain talks about "family values," Americans need to be reminded how he flip-flopped on Jerry Falwell, calling the late religious bigot an "agent of intolerance" one day and then kissing Falwell's fat, hairy behind the next. When John McCain talks about the "sanctity of marriage," Americans need to be reminded how McCain shamelessly dumped his own first wife, following her crippling injury in a car crash, in favor of the younger, prettier, and much richer woman who bankrolled his entry into politics and to whom he is married today. John McCain is a hypocrite.

While I am pleased that the Obama campaign has begun to hit back against the McCain attack machine, I also understand Obama's need to hold the high ground and not allow himself to be dragged into the same cesspool McCain occupies. This, alas, is the difficult balance Obama must maintain if he is to win. Thankfully, the rest of us have no such tightrope to walk, and no such need to go easy on one bitter old gas-bag who needs to be put out of his misery and ours. For Democratic leaders in Washington, for local Democratic activists, and for Democratic bloggers, the time has come to start taking John McCain apart.