John McCain never should have released Sarah Palin’s name.

When introducing his Vice Presidential nominee, the Senator should have just stuck her on stage and hung a sign around her neck that read I’m a Young, Pretty Female who Loves Guns and Hates Abortions.

Those are, after all, the only qualifications McCain could have cared about when he chose the Governor of Alaska as his running mate.

In the four days since the announcement of this nobody was made, the following revelations have already come out about her:

• On July 31 - of 2008! - Palin told an interviewer that she had no idea what the Vice President does all day;
• Her husband, Todd Palin, was arrested in 1986 for drunk driving;
• Her daughter, Bristol Palin (pictured below), is 17 years old and pregnant;
• The father of Bristol’s baby - classmate Levi Johnston - has written on his MySpace page that he doesn’t want children.

Any of these facts on their own could be overlooked. Or perhaps even all of them, if Sarah Palin was a foreign policy or economic expert.

But she’s being billed as a “hockey mom,” someone who is running on a family values platform. That makes these bullet points legitimate news stories, while also makes us wonder if McCain spent more than 10 minutes vetting Palin.