What does Sarah Palin bring to the McCain campaign? Well, that depends to some extent on what shape you think the McCain campaign is in at this stage.

“America needs a vice president who can eat a mooseburger,” joked Republican strategist Alex Castell[a]nos on CNN this morning. But he quickly added that “she’s got all the conservative credentials. She’s a reformer. She cleaned up state government. She brings a lot to the table. But I think the most important thing she brings is a fresh face to the Republican party.”

What does it say that the most important thing a Republican attack dog finds here is a fresh face?

My view is that the GOP is grasping at straws. They know the Republican brand is in the toilet. They expect a thrashing in the House; the most important question is whether they can retain enough Senate votes to filibuster, which they tried to outlaw two years ago just prior to Palin being elected to her first state-wide office. They’re looking at a slim chance, at best, of imposing four more years of war and record oil-company profits through the imperial White House. (Not that the war machine is worried.)

So it appears McCain’s people have decided their best shot is to lure disaffected Hillary supporters.

“It would be a clear sign by the McCain campaign that they would be making a bid” for women voters, Rove said. “In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen both campaigns refocus themselves in a powerful way on the Hillary Clinton supporters.”

Here’s where it gets weird: in order to do that, the Republicans have picked a woman who first came to public attention with her second-place finish in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest. She’s strongly anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, a lifetime NRA member, from an electorally tiny state, whose husband works for British Petroleum. Do they really think women don’t care about issues like abortion rights, gun control, and the environment as long as the candidate is female? IANA woman, but if I were I might consider that theory insulting.

Palin, the campaign said, “has the record of reform and bipartisanship that others can only speak of. Her experience in shaking up the status quo is exactly what is needed in Washington today.”

This is a difficult argument to make. First of all, when you start talking about her experience, you remind voters that even Obama has more experience than Palin. And while it’s true that both years of her governership show some interest in reform, those reformist credentials were earned fighting corrupt Republicans, people like Don Young and Ted Stevens. Just last month, Palin gave Stevens the minimum possible support, saying it “would be premature at this point” to call for Stevens to resign. Of course, McCain’s distate for Stevens is legendary; maybe he figures he can at least take Ted down with him. (For which we’d owe him one.)

If nothing else, the Republicans are consistent in their respect for creative use of the law.

Palin also faces problems in her own state over what appears to have been questionable efforts by her staff to force the firing of her sister’s ex-husband from the Alaska Public Safety Department. The state legislature hired a private investigator to investigate after the governor fired the head of the Public Safety Department, Walt Monegan, who says she did so because he would not fire the trooper.

After initially denying that her staff had brought pressure to have the trooper, Mike Wooten, who was involved in a child custody dispute with Palin’s sister, dismissed, Palin had to reverse course after an audio recording emerged in which Frank Bailey, the governor’s director of boards and commissions, urged the dismissal of the trooper.

P[al]in suspended Bailey, but she also admitted that people close to her, including her chief of staff, the state attorney general, and her husband also contacted Monegan about the trooper.

Which, realistically, is small potatoes in Alaska, and red meat for loyal Bushies.

If Palin had been a POW, then I’d understand the choice. As is, it looks like desperation to me. Or perhaps John’s thinking Sarah could compete with Cindy for Miss Buffalo Chip.