John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin begs a burning question: Is McCain too risky to ever be president?

I would submit the answer is "Yes."

Palin's biography has already circulated among the blogging community, so I will spare you the particulars. Suffice it to say she is not ready to succeed to the presidency, nor is she likely to be ready anytime in the next few years. She lacks the national experience of Hillary Clinton and is no substitute for the esteemed senator from New York, who actually has earned her stripes in both the foreign and domestic policy arenas.

My objection to McCain's inscrutable logic involves his ludicrous suggestion that, if he were ever incapacitated as president, Palin would be an effective leader of our foreign affairs and a wise protector of our national security. That suggestion is beyond ridicule and implies that McCain either chose his running mate through a deeply flawed thought process or out of deeply cynical political reasons in premeditated disregard for the oath to "faithfully execute the office of President of the United States" and "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Taken together with McCain's saber-rattling bombast at the start of the Georgia crisis, his flippant "bomb, bomb, bomb — bomb, bomb Iran," his "hot-dog" record of crashing five Navy aircraft, and his support for virtually unlimited U.S. military presence in Iraq, McCain's choice of a foreign affairs neophyte shows a willingness to take unacceptable risks with American national security.

Lt. Cmdr. John Sidney McCain III appears less fit to assume the role of Commander-in-Chief and more likely to assume Humphrey Bogart's role as Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny":

"Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action."