I was shocked to hear that McCain picked Palin, who is closer to Ron Paul on policy issues than to John McCain; I tend to believe the Bob Novak column that said McCain would have picked Joe Lieberman if he could “get away with it” — but was dissuaded in order to prevent a GOP Civil War. The Palin pick delays the GOP Civil War for a little while.

I have been hearing for almost a year now that McCain has been telling GOP bigwigs he will only serve one term in order to get the base on board, a pledge he almost made publicly a year ago. So I see the pick as effort to muffle GOP dissent by “libertarian republicans” and Paulists (there’s a difference in my mind) and support for Barr and Baldwin; he also picked Palin to go after Hillary’s hardcore feminist supporters.

But I was also surprised to see that McCain has not received a bump from the pick, based on InTrade numbers. McCain has actually gone down about 7% since he picked Palin, reversing the upward trend that started on the 27th. It’s possible that the market priced in a McCain-Romney ticket as a more effective ticket– Romney would have brought a ground game that McCain lacks. InTrade still has the race at about 60/40 (for Obama), and I think that’s accurate.

On a final note, Obama had a line in his nomination speech about McCain not having the “temperament” to be President — the media has not picked up on it, but I think painting McCain a has having a “short fuse” could be very, very effective.