Editor’s Note: Monica Crowley, Ph.D., is a panelist on The McLaughlin Group, the host of the nationally syndicated radio program "The Monica Crowley Show" and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Somewhere, Hillary Clinton is smiling.

She’s smiling because John McCain had the cojones to do what Barack Obama did not: put a woman on his ticket.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is now running with McCain as his choice to be vice president. She is a tax-cutting, pro-drilling, environmentalist, gun-defending, pro-life mom of five, with a son in the Army about to be deployed to Iraq.

You want "change?" Here it is. Obama said last night that change doesn’t come "from Washington, it comes TO Washington." How odd, then, that both Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, are quintessentially Washington creatures.

Governor Palin, from Alaska, is about as far removed from Washington as you can be without living in Russia, just a hop away from her state.

She hunts, shoots, has a lifetime membership in the NRA, ice fishes, is Christian and pro-life.

A few months ago, Obama put down people like her, saying they "cling to their guns and their religion."

Something tells me Governor Palin is going to be a rock star in the states that really matter — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan. They like their guns and religion, too.

In high school, Palin played basketball so fiercely that she earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda." She also played in the championship game with a stress fracture in her ankle, nailing a free throw in the critical final seconds.

She’s a cool chick and a tough cookie. I say again: somewhere Hillary smiles.