Just as Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate told us much about how the campaign perceived its weaknesses and strengths (see last week’s column), so the choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tells us what John McCain & Co. really think about their own chances.

I think they think they’re in big trouble and consequently chose a high-risk strategy. They’re gambling she will be the same help to McCain as Lyndon Johnson was to John F. Kennedy but run the risk she will be as Spiro Agnew was to Richard Nixon.

First off, like the Obama campaign, they eschewed electoral geography. Tim Pawlenty, Tom Ridge, Rob Portman or Mitt Romney would have been helpful in the key battleground states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan respectively. There are various reasons why any one of them would be rejected, but essentially the campaign is saying none guarantees a McCain victory in those provinces.

Instead, just as Obama tossed aside the message of “change” in favor of Biden’s experience, so McCain sacrificed the issue of experience in favor of closing the gender gap. Palin’s resume is laughably thinner than Obama’s when it comes to presidential issues.

In one early interview she noted she didn’t even know what the vice president is supposed to do most of the time—and she hasn’t thought much about Iraq. Perhaps Dick Cheney can give her a briefing. Otherwise Biden will make tacos out of her in the scheduled vice-presidential debate.

The McCains, however, believe there are still plenty of women so angry that Hillary Clinton lost out both for president and veep that they will cross over to the dark side despite her admonitions not to do so. It will be a battle for the hearts and minds of the mindlessly heart-broken.

Palin is ideologically as conservative as they come. Therefore, this will be an interesting test of whether the gender gap that has favored the Democrats for a couple of decades actually is based on issues such as choice, health care and opposition to war or whether it can be narrowed solely on gender—and by how much.

Geraldine Ferraro, however, did diddley for Walter Mondale despite her anatomy.

Of equal if not greater importance is another role Palin will play to bolster McCain in a subtle but significant way.

Palin is associated with ethics reform in Alaska and has criticized her own state party on ethics questions. She is also very close to indicted Sen. Ted Stevens, which may negate that virtue, but she nevertheless has a reputation as—get this please—a “maverick.”

That’s a word John McCain wants to own by way of separating himself from George Bush and the Republican Party, but his own record of recent years and flip-flops during this campaign tend to tarnish the term. By picking an unlikely running mate—one who revels in her own maverickdom—he hopes to revive the reputation he gained so long ago but has been losing throughout the campaign.

Running as leader of a team of mavericks is the best way he can separate himself from Bush without actually separating himself from Bush.

“Poof! I am again a maverick,” is his message, while throughout the Republican convention he will continue to pledge allegiance to tax cuts for the wealthy, beneficences for big oil, high-priced health care and continued pursuit of warfare throughout the Middle East.

Will the public recognize this cognitive dissonance?

Perhaps it will—but maybe it won’t. The “big lie” still has its advocates. You may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, but all you have to do is fool enough of them on November 4th.

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Don Rose is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer.