This may sound strange, but when I watched on TV as Republican Sarah Palin, 44, debuted at a rally last week as John McCain’s running mate, it seemed whacky — yet familiar.

I mean here she was, barely into her first term as governor of Alaska, with no foreign policy experience, emerging as a potential vice president of the United States. You can’t make this stuff up. Or can you? I’d seen something like this before — but it was only a 1963 movie, The Thrill of It All, in which a series of events catapults a housewife played by Doris Day into a wildly popular national commercial spokeswoman for Happy soap, her face plastered all over TV, billboards and magazines.

I have visited Alaska and interviewed a governor there and I don’t belittle the scope of the role. But it seems astonishing to think, or at least to feel assured, that someone who has been governor there — or anywhere — for less than two years, with a background before that only as a small-town mayor, is ready to be VP.

Of course, not everyone feels that way. I spoke today with former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, a McCain enthusiast, just as she was about to rush out to the GOP convention.

Swift called Palin a “bold choice” and declared, “She’s from outside of Washington, D.C., and that makes the guys crazy.” She likes its underscoring McCain’s reform/maverick message.

As for the appeal Palin may have for women, Swift said, “It’s always great for my daughters and for me to see someone who relates to our life experience and to know what it’s like to get out the door to the airport on the day before school. But, on the other hand, I’m much more interested in her willingness to take on special interests, to shake up Washington.”

Swift asserted that the Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama also lacks foreign policy experience, that McCain has plenty of savvy in that area, and that it’s nice to see he has a running mate “who can help him in what is often times an even more difficult task, which is taking on the status quo.”

Maybe that is nice. But former Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, isn’t buying it. I’ve talked to Dukakis countless times over the decades, but never found him as animated or as contemptuous as he was in discussing McCain’s veep pick.

Of course, Dukakis likes Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Obama’s VP choice. Ironically, unknown to Dukakis at the time, his 1988 campaign leaked a tape that helped drive Biden from that year’s White House race. The tape showed Biden, without acknowledgment, mouthing phrases from a British politician.

Dukakis says he’s delighted that Obama has tapped Biden, “for all the right reasons — including the fact that he could be president of the United States if something happened to the president, a rather sharp contrast to the other side.”

Biden chairs Senate Foreign Relations and is a big fan of Amtrak, a Dukakis crusade.

“I like guys who get on the train and ride to work, and do so because they want to be home at night,” Dukakis said, echoing his own values.

He said he could not believe it when he heard McCain picked Palin. He said the single most important criterion must be that the VP could if necessary step in and be a first-rate president. He said he did things right when he tapped Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.

He said his campaign had teams of lawyers and accountants investigating Bentsen and three other finalists, Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sens. John Glenn and Al Gore. “They went into their backgrounds, their history, their finances, their taxes. [Campaign chairman] Paul Brountas interviewed them and their spouses at length. I interviewed them at length. Brountas went back and did another round of interviews.”

Dukakis added, “If you do the process right, it leads to the right result. It’s hard to describe, but remember, in 10 years as governor I had picked a ton of people.”

Dukakis said that when he’d been governor for as short a time as Palin — barely a year and a half — he was not ready to be president or even VP. He called the situation “absurd.”

Obama is in his fourth year as a senator from Illinois, where he’d been a state legislator. I’m not here to endorse Obama, but it’s obvious that anyone serving in the Senate for three-plus years has more exposure to foreign policy matters than someone who’s served a year-plus as a governor.

Dukakis termed it “absolutely ludicrous” for Palin to tout as an impressive qualification that she commands the Alaska National Guard. Dukakis said, “I had a fair amount of contact with my National Guard and, of course, they were a critically important part of the Blizzard of ’78 effort.”

But he said that is much different from sending troops into battle. “When fighting begins, the president of the United States federalizes them and they go to war under his authority, not the governor’s.”

When I had asked Swift about the pregnancy of Palin’s teenaged daughter, she said, “I’m not going to talk about that, nor should anybody else.” Now, when I asked Dukakis about the daughter, he said, “That doesn’t concern me.” But he did express concern over the controversy as to whether Palin dismissed Alaska’s public safety commissioner because he refused to fire a trooper who’d been married to her sister.

As far as Dukakis could see, “There was simply no vetting process. I mean nobody in Alaska was talked to,” including the former commissioner and the legislator leading an inquiry into the flap.

Dukakis said Democrats should not ridicule Palin but instead raise questions about McCain’s judgment. “After all, this is all about him.”

In 1988, George H.W. Bush’s pick for vice president, Dan Quayle, was widely scorned as in over his head. Of course, Bush won anyway.

Dukakis says, “Maybe I didn’t do as good a job as I should have raising questions about Bush’s judgment.”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com