Conventional wisdom tells us that a presumptive presidential nominee’s running mate doesn’t really matter. The people vote for the candidate who headlines the ticket, not the supporting act. Traditionally, voters only seem to care about vice presidential choices when they are exceptionally poor—for example, Dan Quayle. But as in so many other cases, this election season happily defenestrates the conventional wisdom into a waiting pile of dung.

We have heard plenty over the past few weeks about the various credentials (or lack thereof) of the vice presidential candidates. Although vice presidents are important, I would like to take the focus back to the names at the top of the campaigns, if I may. Specifically, I would like to explore what these vice presidential picks tell us about Obama and McCain, respectively. A candidate’s choice of running mate speaks volumes about who he is and what is important to him—and, lest we forget, whom he wants to vote for him. Analysis of a vice presidential pick, therefore, should not stop at political viability; we must discover what it tells us about the candidate himself and what kind of leader he would be.

First up: Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. Politically, he does a fair amount for Obama, but he isn’t a knockout. His solid working-class credentials will help Obama combat some of the arugula-flavored charges of elitism that have been thrown his way. Although it is more difficult to sell a campaign of change when your running mate has been a senator for almost 36 years, what Obama loses on the “change” front is more than made up for by Biden’s staggering foreign policy experience—bolstering what is often thought to be Obama’s weakest point. Although Delaware only has three electoral votes, and would almost certainly have gone blue anyway, Biden was born and raised in the battleground state of Pennsylvania and could manage to tip the balance there.

But Biden is a bit boring, perhaps, and the media attention given him so far has mostly amounted to a collective, “Oh, okay.” Certainly, he hasn’t been the headline-grabber that Sarah Palin has been. Palin has lit a veritable fire under a Republican base that was all too weary of John McCain. To quote Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, speaking of his approval of the Palin pick, “We haven’t had any excitement in the party for four years!” Sarah Palin is a creationist and pro-life advocate of traditional marriage from a small town and opposes bans on assault rifles. If McCain wanted a social conservative, well, that is certainly what he got. Who wouldn’t be excited?

But what does this pick tell us about John McCain? For a man who has spent most of his political career branding himself as a “maverick” who isn’t afraid to cross party lines in search of the truth and what is right, the Palin pick shows a staggering amount of pandering. Simply put, Republicans weren’t happy with John McCain’s position on social issues, and rather than sticking to what he’s always believed in, McCain retreated and dove head-first into an Alaska-sized vat of red paint.

Now, some might consider it offensive for McCain to give in so blatantly to the social conservatives, but this is the sort of political maneuvering that we Americans have grown used to. However, this former cancer patient and torture victim would place an inexperienced two-year governor of a state with a smaller population than my hometown of Tulsa, Okla. within a 72-year-old heartbeat of the presidency. The pick of Sarah Palin, an American so ignorant of the rest of world that she never bothered to get a passport until July of 2007, is more than offensive pandering—it is critically poor leadership.

It might seem odd for the Democrats to level the charge of inexperience against McCain-Palin when Obama is lacking in this category himself. Such an argument ignores the fact that Obama has more experience than that other great Illinois legislator did when he was elected president—I am speaking of Abraham Lincoln. Sarah Palin does not. But the number of years served do not tell us everything: we must look at the quality of leadership shown by actions taken in that time, and at the quality of the candidate himself. The Biden pick shows us that Obama, apparently quite cognizant of his deficiencies, took steps to correct them by picking one of the single most experienced and knowledgeable politicians in the field today. In an Obama White House, Joe Biden will be among the most important advisers to the president.

With this action, Obama has demonstrated the single most important aspect of leadership: the ability to listen. No one can know everything, be an expert in everything, and so a true leader is identified by his awareness of his own shortcomings and his ability to listen to those who are strong where he is weak. More than anything else, Abraham Lincoln was a great leader because he was willing to listen to his advisers. The Biden pick gives us critical evidence that Obama will lead using the same set of skills.

And the Palin pick? Well, it’s just more evidence that the John McCain of the last two years happily places politics in front of all else, even America’s wellbeing—business as usual from the GOP. Still, I suppose McCain won’t get the opportunity to be even a poor leader if he can’t win the election, huh?