My wife — yes, a woman — put this question to me this morning: “Doesn’t McCain want to be President?”

This was my first thought when I heard of his vice-presidential choice, as well.

Let’s review the facts.

The Presidency of the United States is the highest office in the land.  That’s a land that has a budget of 3.1 trillion dollars.  How many is a trillion? If someone gave you a dollar every second for about the next 31,710 years, you’d have your first trillion dollars.  In June 2007, Governor Palin signed Alaska’s budget: a whopping $6.6 billion.  How many is a billion?  Spend about 31 years collecting those dollar bills.

The President of the United States — the Vice-President if something happens to the President — is the Commander in Chief of the entire United States Military.  This is approximately one-and-one-half million people spread across five branches (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard).  That doesn’t count the families of military personnel, by the way.

This puts the number of military personnel approximately 50% higher than the number of reindeer in Alaska.

If only there were as many people in Alaska as reindeer.  (There aren’t.  The number of people in Alaska won’t get close to one million until sometime later in the century.)  But forget the reindeer: the number of people in all of Alaska is less than the number of people in the United States military by more than half.  And comparing Alaska to the rest of the United States?  Well, the good news is that the total population of Alaska is at least one-fifth of one-percent of the total population of the United States.  More good news: in 2007, Alaska had almost 100,000 more people than the District of Columbia.  Still, at $9.7 billion in 2008, DC’s budget is larger than Alaska’s.

Okay, so what?  What’s my point?

Do I really have to spell it out?  McCain’s pick for Vice-President was the mayor of a town of approximately 5,600 to maybe as high as 9,000 people before spending about the last 1.5 years as governor in Alaska.  The population of Wasilla seems to be unknown. Wasilla’s own website claims 6,715 people.  And while everyone keeps saying she’s been governor of Alaska for the last two years, they appear to be using some kind of “new math.”  She took office in December of 2006. The way I see it, that’s just more than one-and-a-half years ago.

Imagine someone from the city council of Fresno, California — wait, that wouldn’t be fair: the city has almost 200,000 less people than the entire state of Alaska.  Let’s take someone from the county Board of Supervisors; Fresno County has 300,000+ more people than the entire state of Alaska.  But, hmmm, Fresno County’s budget is only around $1.7 billion compared to Alaska’s $6.6 billion. How can we begin to understand the problem here?

Actually, I think Sarah Palin herself said it best: “I’m just your average hockey mom.”

Me?  I was hoping for someone who might be qualified to run the world’s only remaining super-power.