Whether Sarah Palin is ready for the vice presidency and to be positioned “within a heart-beat of the presidency” just is not the first thought that came to my mind when I heard the announcement. I didn’t try to recognize why John McCain had selected her as his running-mate or wonder how she might fit into his ticket. My imagination didn’t go immediately to how Hillary and Michelle would react to being upstaged by a lesser woman. The profundity of my political analysis went no deeper than asking aloud, is that spelled with P or F?

Whether McCain’s selection of Palin is a wise decision of political strategy cannot be known for some while, but the smartness of it as campaign tactics was quickly demonstrated.

It is working? I still don’t know if Sarah Palin would be a good vice president, but she certainly is a hum-dinger of a campaigner. After all, American politics doesn’t seem ever to have been as much about fitness for office as is has been about winning an election.

I heard the announcement on NPR as I drove into Oklahoma City. I began to put things together when I recalled something about the Alaska governor being challenged for firing the state police head. This was about it.

As I continued to listen, I heard a little about her experience as a small-town council member, mayor of the town, state official and finally governor. The emphasis was upon how insignificant all this is and how unsuited she must be for the office.

As soon as I reached my destination, I fired-up my laptop and Googled her. I read many sites and began to be impressed with quality of performance more than quantity of resume. An 80 approval rating of a governor, for instance, is not to be dismissed lightly.

At times it seemed everyone, not just NPR and Democrats, was determined to find, or imagine if necessary, every reason the governor should not have been selected. Of course, all this has less to do with electing her vice president than it does with electing McCain to be president. She seemed to be the weak spot on the edge of the McCain target, even if a long way from the bull’s eye.

My thought then turned to consideration of those factors that might suggest why she might be capable. Perhaps it was much my empathy for the underdog, but I wanted to call out: Let’s give the woman a chance. Let’s hear from her and get to know her before we make a final decision.

Early, I wondered if McCain had shrewdly chosen a woman to capture the large number of women who had been prepared to vote Democrat in hopes of Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman president. Perhaps their frustrations were exacerbated when Barack Obama chose not to name her as running-mate. I dismissed this thought upon recognizing the women most active and vocal for Hillary-as-the-first-woman-president would never vote for any Republican even if a woman for the same reasons they promoted Hillary.

Then we began to hear from other women, those less feminist and doctrinaire, but equally resentful of the back seats in political buses. They spoke out in words and emotion that display they think Sarah Palin to be more of a woman in their concept of womanhood than Hillary Clinton. Hillary was once First Lady, but Sarah is a hockey mom. Hillary went to Yale Law, but Sarah to a state college. Hillary wears blue stockings, while Sarah wears a blue shirt.

The fact of the matter is that John McCain has tapped into a very long standing, firmly established and highly valued American dream: Anyone can grow up to be president.

It stirs the imagination and excites the spirits that a rather ordinary and clearly believable mom could stand up in a town meeting to protest corruption and then go on to get elected to local office and tackle the corruption and keep on going to the state house and, finally, the White House. The professional politicians, they think, can endorse whom they will, but we the people will vote for a person just like us. This might be an unrealistic fantasy and invalid analysis, but this seems to be how many voters feel.

If the majority of November voters perceive Sarah Palin as an ordinary David going up against a political Goliath, she just might become vice president. If so, you know who she will bring with her to the White House.