Imagine adding intelligent design to the Advanced Placement biology curriculum. Although this may seem ridiculous, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin would embrace the idea.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s choice of Palin as his running mate is nothing short of a political blunder. Palin not only endangers McCain’s campaign for the White House, but could also lead to an inexperienced and terrifying administration.

Palin’s main flaw is her lack of political experience. She has been Alaska’s governor for fewer than two years and has no law or history degree apart from a minor in political science from the University of Idaho. It seems hypocritical of the Republican Party to choose such an unqualified running mate. Since day one, McCain has been scrutinizing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s supposed lack of governmental experience. Obama’s political record, however, dwarfs that of Palin’s. Obama has served four years in the U.S. Senate and received a degree in law from Harvard University.

In addition to Palin’s lack of experience, she is also quite hypocritical. She preaches abstinence, yet her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. Maybe if she wasn’t opposed to teaching sexual education in school, her pregnant daughter wouldn’t have even been an issue. And the hypocrisies don’t stop there.

In Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention, she claimed that she was fighting “big oil,” but her own Alaskan inauguration was sponsored by Beyond Petroleum Exploration, Inc. And don’t forget that her own husband is a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope. The contradictions here are clear.

So why would McCain have chosen such a hypocritical and under qualified candidate? One reason may be that McCain hopes Palin can secure the conservative base of the Republican Party while also reaching out to Senator Hillary Clinton’s Democratic supporters. While the first goal may be fulfilled because of Palin’s strongly conservative views on abortion, gun control, gay rights and intelligent design, the second is destined to fail.

Clinton herself has already thrown her full support behind Obama, “I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me,” she said in an interview with the BBC News. In addition, choosing Palin simply to get the female vote is an insult to women. To think that Clinton’s supporters will now jump on the GOP bandwagon just because Palin is a female implies that Clinton did not gain their support from her vast political experience, knowledge of foreign policy and health care plan. This is a pathetic use of identity politics—Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.

One thing Palin has accomplished is making a splash and drawing a mob of media attention. Sadly for Palin and McCain, however, this has exposed a lot of her imperfections. Take, for example, the recent KTVU 2 news report on how she used her power as governor to get her former brother-in-law, trooper Mike Wooten, fired after a nasty divorce. That makes her craving for media attention seem like more of a belly flop.

The scariest aspect of Palin, though, is her policy on the environment. It’s frightening to have a potential vice president who, in an interview with newsmax.com, said “a changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.” Come on, Palin, it’s 2008! How can McCain claim that Palin has “green” policies if she denies the very cause of global warming?

Her plans to power America in the future are nothing new. More gas. More oil. More global warming. Currently, according to Palin’s speech at the convention, “a $40 billion natural gas pipeline” will soon provide the gas to warm our homes, consequently destroying Alaska’s wilderness and frying our planet. Instead of poisoning the earth, we need new ideas from intelligent politicians to use America’s great ingenuity to clean up our country.

Another interesting fact about this pipeline is that, contrary to what Palin implied in her speech, the pipeline is far from a reality. According to the New York Times, the pipeline exists only on paper—not a single section has been laid and they don’t even have federal approval. Palin said that “the deal was struck,” but the pipeline is decades from becoming reality and may not even be built at all. This type of deceit should not be tolerated.

The danger is real, and it’s closer than America may realize. McCain is 72 years old, and although this does mean lots of experience, it also means that he may pass away, resulting in a perilous Palin presidency. The choice of Palin as the Republican vice- presidential candidate is both potentially disastrous to McCain’s presidential campaign and to our country’s future. So come Nov. 4, regardless of your political stance, gender or race, I beg you, do not make the mistake of electing such an inexperienced, deceitful and dangerous person to one of the most powerful positions of leadership on earth.