While several news outlets this weekend debated whether the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate signaled desperation or surrender from the GOP, at least one Baltimore psychiatrist claimed that it showed McCain's fragile psyche had been damaged by his months-long campaign to be president.
 
Speaking from his office in Towson, renowned Washington psychologist Lewis "Lou" Berral said that he thought the pick signaled that McCain had an Agamemnon Complex, identified by Freud as the condition where a much older man becomes enamored of a younger woman, often with disastrous results (in Greek myth Agamemnon was stabbed to death by his wife because he had an affair with a younger woman).
 
"It's a classic case, and a pattern that has repeated itself inside and outside of politics since time immemorial," said Dr. Berral.  "McCain passed over other, much more qualified politicians, like Tim Pawlenty or Joe Lieberman, so that he could vote with his lower brain in order to spend time next to an attractive woman.  I think that we should consider John McCain to be totally unstable and unfit for any type of political office."
 
Presidential Historians said that the potential for scandal was high with such a pairing, with noted scholar Andrew Sullivan writing over the weekend that "we know that the Oval Office is a sexually charged environment, and that older Republican men are tempted to dalliances, from Fred Thompson's Washington horn-dogging to Dwight Eisenhower's scandalous affair with Minnie Pearl.  Why would voters want to put their stamp of approval upon this again?"

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