George Will had this to say on the subject in todays paper:

George Will: Experience can be a cruel teacher
07:10 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The word "experience" appears 91 times in the Federalist Papers, those distillations of conservative sense and sensibility. America's Founders were empiricists and students of history who trusted "that best oracle of wisdom, experience," which is humanity's "least fallible guide."

The Founders knew, as conservatives do, that all guides are fallible. Hence conservatism's inclination to discern prescriptions in traditions, which are mankind's slow adjustments to the accretion of experiences.

So, Sarah Palin. The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience.

In 1912, Mr. McCain's Arizona became the 48th state. In 1959, Ms. Palin's Alaska became the 49th. Modern conservatism has the libertarian cast of a region still steeped in an individualism natural to the frontier's spaciousness.

But American conservatism depends on what it calls "fusion," the collaboration of libertarians and social conservatives concerned that liberty unleavened by restraints creates a licentious culture. Ms. Palin supposedly is fusion in one person.

Many cultural conservatives, who are much of the GOP's base, consider Mr. McCain's adherence to their persuasion perfunctory. By his selection of Ms. Palin, he got the enthusiasm of the base. But what has he got in Ms. Palin?

In coming days he and we will learn from a stern teacher, experience.

–Excerpted from a column by The Washington Post's George Will