McCain-Excitement '08?

It's worth noting that by playing it safe and vanilla with his VP choice, Barack Obama has given John McCain a real opportunity to make a splash with his pick: A surprising selection, whether of the Jindal-Palin sort, the Lieberman variety, or something more left-field still, would look even more striking in contrast with Obama's "generic Democrat" choice of a running mate. I don't expect the McCain camp to go this route: I think they're probably feeling pretty good about their position at the moment, and the same "first, do no harm" impulse that produced Obama-Biden will probably produce McCain-Pawlenty or McCain-Romney. (I imagine that the chances of a high-risk, high-reward one-term pledge have likewise dropped toward zero.) But by picking Biden, Obama left a lot of free media coverage on the table, and there's a case to be made that McCain's veep choice should be made with an eye toward scooping it up.