"I don't think it's an argument you can make with a straight face."

Says Althouse, about Obama's ludicrous claim that his Presidential campaign is executive experience. "It's true that Obama's biggest accomplishment is his success (thus far) in running a Presidential campaign," notes Ann, "[b]ut isn't this a bit absurd? One qualifies to run for President by the very activity of running for President?" Of course, Obama has to make this bizarre claim, because he's got nothing else; without it, his supporters look ridiculous in belittling Sarah Palin's experience.

[Added: Ann's commenter Maguro inters Obama's argument: "Taking [it] at face value for a moment, won't Palin prove she's qualified to be VP if her ticket wins? If campaigning for President is sufficient qualification to be President, I see no reason why the same wouldn't apply to to the lesser office of VP."]

And here's David Brooks' take:

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. [Palin] was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign

He's spot-on.

Other Palin memes debunked: Sarah said she didn't know what the veep does | Choosing Sarah was a mistake | Abstinence-only education failed Bristol Palin