There’s a fundamental difference between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, which gives insight into how these two men will run their campaigns, especially in this last phase of the election.

Harvard educated Barack Obama recognizes logical equations as a result of his advanced education. Anything that defies that which is orderly would throw his brain into over load and his head would pop off like a Rock em’ Sock em’ robot. Last week, John McCain defied logic by picking Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. The announcement sent the seemingly sealed Democratic campaign teetering into a tailspin.

Best of all, McCain did it the day after Obama made his big speech at the football stadium. McCain might as well have crouched on his hand and knees behind Obama’s legs and let Sarah Palin push him. Because the choice made no sense, it forced the media to focus their attention on this unknown and away from the Obama campaign. This move is part of McCain’s military survival instinct.

You see, McCain survived a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp. That came after a fireball engulfed him out at sea. This guy is built to test fate. His strategy for victory in November should simply be out-surviving Obama. The deadlocked polls show that Obama’s vital signs are dimming.

Whether or not you agree with the pick, or you claim that “credentials” matter, Palin’s presence has undoubtedly shocked the McCain campaign back into life. They capitalized on Obama’s own slogan of “change,” the antithesis of conservatism. It’s raised an entirely new set of issues for at least a few weeks and drawn attention away from the collective lack of knowledge that these men share of how to fix the country as major banks fail day after day.

Once again, the country can now shift its focus to national conversations on race and gender inequality and the historic aura of this campaign. Of course, because of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin, we have a whole new set of questions to ask but, when someone finally crosses that boundary to offensive they get chastised and sent into exile. It’s unfortunate for them but, beneficial for us if you stop talking and listen to the conversation that’s already taking place.

In a very subtle way, rules and boundaries are being established with out us realizing that they’re drawn. When one of these people offends us, we confirm what we still will and won’t accept as a society. We are now finding out what is and isn’t sexist. Apparently that’s everything.

Questioning Sarah Palin about her ability to raise 5 children while serving as vice president, while not questioning Barack Obama, isn’t sexist. On the other hand, when a male calls Sarah Palin “attractive” or a frat boy calls her a PILF (Pol I’d Like to Fuck) it’s sexist. Bashing her 17 year-old daughter for getting pregnant isn’t abhorrent, but, photo-shopping her head onto Jenna Jameson’s body is?

What we need now, is someone to shock virtue into the world by offending it. Some men, outside the greater New York area, actually find women attractive. Women who enter the political sphere are still women and will be subjected to the same treatment as a lady walking down the street on windy, cold, and wet day—full eye scan, head to toe. If Sarah Palin ends up riding in a motorcade, some cabbie will honk at and a construction worker will whistle, despite the fact that 6 big dudes will accompany her.

As Americans, we can rely on the notion that some guy at the bar will always take the ribbing too far though and will make a crude and suggestive joke that revolts the rest of the men. That drunk is a hero, a patriot, and a boundary setter.

Judging a woman for appearance alone is as shallow as McCain picking her for shock value. I highly doubt that most men would vote for John McCain on the basis of his running mate’s looks. Certainly, if she were less attractive, a VP nod to an Alaskan governor would still have dropped a cherry bomb in the toilet.

Sure, some people will vote Republican just for that fact alone. Just as disgruntled Hilary Clinton supporters may swing Republican. A disproportionate number of West Virginians may not vote Obama because he is black and on that basis alone. As one West Virginian put so eloquently in the primaries, “some folk around here just don’t like black people.” It’s a sad truth, but, a truth nonetheless that these sentiments exist. It’s impossible to look away from them though because they are also the people who are setting boundaries.