As I tried to think of how I felt about John McCain naming Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin his running mate last week, one name jumped to my mind. No, it wasn’t Sen. Hillary Clinton or former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro; it was someone much more ideologically congruent to Palin. But before we name names, let’s reminisce a little.

Let’s go back three years to Oct. 2005 when this other woman had her 15 minutes of fame. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had just overwhelmed the Gulf Coast and virtually destroyed a major American city. In the weeks that followed, government officials began to admit that not all had gone right, mistakes had been made and apologies were in order. We learned in that tragedy the many faults of our bloated bureaucracy.

Exhibit 1A was Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He was generally a good guy with one big problem: He was completely unqualified for his job. Before joining FEMA, Brown had spent about a decade in a high-level position at the International Arabian Horses Association. He was essentially fired from that post for what The Boston Herald called “alleged supervision failures.” Talk about foreshadowing.

Despite garnering some kind words for his efforts from President Bush (“You’re doin’ a heck of a job, Brownie”), it was clear that Brown himself felt completely inadequate to handle the massive disaster relief effort following Katrina. In e-mails to his friends, a desperate Brown said things like “I’m trapped now, please rescue me.” It isn’t a huge shock that Brown was in too far over his head — at least not since we learned that he had fabricated even the little relevant experience listed on his résumé.

Brown resigned a couple of weeks later, and you would think we would all come away a little wiser. Positions within the government and its bureaucracy, even those ho-hum, associate-director-of-something-or-other variety, are very significant and cannot be taken lightly. The president must consider the importance of each and every one of his appointments because they all serve a purpose. Mayhem can result if the wrong people are in charge.

And then U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist passed away. Bush appointed John Roberts as the new chief justice, but with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s prior resignation creating another vacancy, he had to make another appointment. We don’t really need the parable of Michael Brown to understand that a Supreme Court appointment is a very serious matter. And who should know that better than Bush, who owes his very presidency to the high court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore?

But it turns out there were no lessons learned. Bush’s nomination for the second Supreme Court vacancy is the answer to our little game: Harriet Miers. True, Miers was at least a lawyer and White House counsel. She was also a close friend and important advisor to the president. But as far as convention for Supreme Court appointments, Miers was an inexperienced pick out of left field.

That Miers’s nomination was eventually withdrawn because of political pressure is not the issue. What matters is that the president chose to go with a close friend and party-base pleaser for a powerful post, instead of someone who actually had experience as a judge. Worse, the pick had the odious stench of tokenization: one woman for another, regardless of how dissimilar their ideologies may be.

And so we come full circle back to McCain. Granted, Palin is not his close friend (alarmingly, he seems to have only met her once before selecting her as his running mate), but he did pick her for reasons of political expedience rather than qualification. She’s been governor of our most removed state, and even that for only 20 months. Before that, she was mayor of a town with less people than my high school (it’s a big school, but still).

The stench of tokenization? It’s here, too; apparently McCain believes that Hillary Clinton’s 18 million supporters will jump at anything in a pantsuit. And in the greatest of ironies, even Mother Nature showed up for this hapless re-enactment — in the form of Hurricane Gustav.

And let’s face it: John McCain is very old. If he manages to pull off a miraculous win in November, we can safely say that the heartbeat separating Palin from the Oval Office isn't a reliable one. Can we really afford to have a person as far removed and irrelevant as Palin as our president? Of course not, but try telling that to McCain: He’s too busy hugging Bush on yet another issue.