Vice President U S

John McCain's surprise choice of first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate recasts the fall campaign with a candidate who is virtually unknown on the national stage but makes history as the first woman on a Republican ticket.

The country, most of it anyway, got its first glimpse Friday of Sarah Heath Palin, John McCain's selection as his running mate, and the reaction was nearly universal: Who? Palin is breathtakingly unlike any other vice presidential pick in American history -- a gun-toting, mooseburger-eating former Miss Wasilla, an Alaska governor whose parents nearly missed her national unveiling because they were out hunting caribou.

It didn't take Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger long to zero in on what he liked about a John McCain-Sarah Palin Republican ticket: He likes the gender balance. When asked about McCain's running mate choice at an appearance in San Diego on Friday, Schwarzenegger said it would be "terrific" to have "a man and a woman running things together" for the first time in the White House.

The morning after her debut on the national stage, Sarah Palin, the new running mate for presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, greeted about 20 people Saturday at Tom's Diner, a local landmark in the city's South Side neighborhood. Asked how she enjoyed her first day in the international spotlight, Palin replied, "It's great to see another part of the country." She will see more today. Palin and McCain will rush to Jackson, Miss.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is as complex as the place she calls home. Plucked from near-political obscurity to become Sen. John McCain's running mate, Palin either has pitch-perfect political instincts or has benefited from a spectacular run of luck that has landed her in the ultimate right place at the right time. It is easy to see why McCain was drawn to her; their political resumes have much in common.

Much of Gov. Sarah Palin's hometown was in the grip of Palin fever on Saturday, a day after the former mayor was unveiled as John McCain's vice presidential pick. Early-morning patrons of the Mocha Moose Cafe said they were pleasantly stunned by the choice of their former mayor. Before midday, the Radio 99.7 billboard whooped like a high school cheerleader: "Go Sarah. We Love You."

With his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain is giving his campaign a political makeover: Rather than selling himself as a war hero with national security credentials, he is donning the mantle of the reformer. The new approach borrows a page from the playbook of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who late in the Democratic primary campaign framed herself as a hero of the struggling middle class.

Delegates to the Republican National Convention whirled in their seats en masse and called out from the floor: "Tell the truth! Tell the truth!" The chants and finger-wagging were directed toward the sky boxes. Their target: the television networks and the rest of the "liberal mainstream media." It happened 20 years ago, as the GOP gathered in New Orleans, Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak recalled this week. But the scene could have come from the convention floor Tuesday in St.

John McCain first met Sarah Palin in February. Six months later, he asked her to be his running mate. The way McCain weighed and discarded vice presidential prospects over that time has come under scrutiny as the choice of Palin turns politically perilous. The question is whether McCain carefully vetted his selection and, if he did not, what that says about the judgment and decision-making the presumed Republican nominee would bring to the White House.

The topic was Sen. John McCain's vice presidential pick, and talk show host Laura Ingraham was on a roll. Accepting an award from the Republican National Coalition for Life on behalf of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was under wraps working on her convention speech, Ingraham chastised anyone who would suggest that Palin is not up to the job. As a pro-life working mother of five, including a special needs infant and a pregnant 17-year-old, Ingraham said, "Sarah Palin represents a new feminism. . .