Barack Obama shocked America by choosing a running mate that screams liberal Democrat. We’re shocked not because Biden is an outstanding choice, but rather because Biden is a status quo choice, not at all equal to the “change” mantra we’ve been hearing from the O-Ba-Ma camp. Senator Evan Bayh of Illinois would have been the daring choice for Obama VP because he is moderate and from the midwest, the antithesis of northeastern establishment liberalism soldified in the Biden pick.

John McCain needs to counter Obama’s safe pick by doing something truly daring: choosing a VP whom voters would not traditionally associate with the Republican Party who is at the same time committed to conservative principles.

Listening to the ranters at the podium at the DNC it seems that what Democrats are most angry at Republican’s about (when you take the Iraq war out of the equation) is the misperception that Republicans want to keep women and minorities down.

What if John McCain really upset the apple cart, countered the falsely created perceptions of Democrats that Republicans hate women – especially successful women – and tapped not a politician, but a successful female business executive to be his running mate who could speak to America’s economic and energy crises?

How ’bout these possibilities:

Patricia Woertz, President of Archer Daniels Midland, and former executive vice president of Chevron with previous executive positions at Gulf, she hails from the rust belt state of Pennsylvania with a degree in accounting, beginning her career as a CPA at Ernst & Young in Pittsburgh.

Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, who is contemplating a run for governor of California, and led eBay for the last ten years. In a 2005 feature, US News & World Report said,

Since Whitman joined eBay in early 1998, its revenue has exploded–from about $5.7 million to an expected $4.3 billion this year. The first global online marketplace to connect buyers and sellers 24-7, eBay conducts more transactions every day than the Nasdaq Stock Market. It started out as a quaint digital auctioneer of collectibles like Pez dispensers, but this year Whitman’s company will enable the sale of over $40 billion worth of cars, clothing, and computers.

UPDATE: Opps, I left off Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

Of course, there are also women in politics as possibilities:

Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska
Condolezza Rice, Secretary of State

Choosing the right woman – one who has not yet been painted as an ideological extremist by the MSM merely because she is a conservative – might go a long way to woo Hillary Clinton supporters who now feel disenfranchised by the Democrat Party.