Last night I went to bed thinking Gov Pawlenty was going to be the Veep pick, it wasn’t certain, but it was pretty likely (especially with the rope-a-dope on canceling his Denver appearances). InTrade moved all around between Pawlenty and Romney. The long shot was Lieberman. Early on we heard Sarah Palin was on the short list, but there wasn’t much from her recently. Eric Cantor seemed to be gaining steam in the last week. We had what we thought, but we weren’t sure.

The news of Sarah Palin being chosen only leaked maybe about an hour before she was to be introduced as John McCain’s running mate. Wow. This week was impressive for the McCain campaign. They really faked everyone out (especially Erick, sorry, heh!) and lowered expectations, and then BANG… Gov Palin!

I give kudos to the McCain campaign, contrast this to the way the Obama rolled out Joe Biden. Obama’s selection got leaked at 2 am, prompting them to have their 3 am text message of annoyance and still getting scooped by the MSM. Biden was already known to be on the short list and most people had him as the selection 2 days ahead of time. No one really had Palin in the final 3 (Lieberman, Romney and Pawlenty). That is a tight campaign.

Additionally, the McCain team has really has been awesome with their ad campaign. We’ve seen time and time again the sharp contrasts and quick turn arounds. They are inside the Obama decision loop. We’ve seen that for the last month plus (ever since Obama’s World Tour).

Great job McCain, great pick and great roll-out. Steve Schmidt, you rock!

PS. I predict that this will knock Obama’s bounce right out of the water.

The best part? Obama himself (after election, prior to his taking the oath of office):

You know, I am a believer in … in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job. Uh, and I think that … if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people. — Barack Obama, 2004

I’m sure that we’ll see this ad in some form on TV sometime soon.

Pass the popcorn, this is getting good.

So we all remember Hillary’s 3am ad, and how it was just about perfect if you want to switch her out for McCain and run it against Barack.

Here’s the new ad by McCain that features part of it….

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