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McCain is saying that his vetting process for his pick for Vice President was completely thorough (link) and that he was grateful for the results. Grateful for the results!? Really!? This has got to go down as the dumbest, pre-election blunder since Gary Hart's 'follow me' remark.
The simple facts are that McCain met her face-to-face once in Feb. 2008 and then spoke with her on the phone once a couple days before his decision.
"John McCain first met Governor Sarah Palin at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington in February of 2008 and came away extraordinarily impressed."
"Last Sunday (August 24th), Governor Palin and John McCain had a conversation over the phone"(link)
"Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin's background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice." (link)
That was it.
The vetting process was quite different for the other potentials. The ridiculous claim by McCain that Palin was thoroughly vetted is insulting to both the intended electorate and the other candidates that actually went through the grueling up-to two-month process of VP vetting. In fact, Pawlenty advisors and another finalists on Maverick's VP list described a rigorous vetting process for candidates that lasted one to two months.
Mr. Straight Talk wanted and fought for either Lieberman or Ridge to be his dance partner for the election, not Palin. But the religious right fought back and threatened a fight on the convention floor. Instead of standing for his beliefs, McCain caved to the religious right that has owned the Republican Party. By throwing away the running mates that he wanted, McCain showed a lack of decisiveness in choosing the partner that he wanted and also showed a tremendous lack of conviction for both the position of Vice President and the individual that he selected.
Did the McCain group think that no one would check?
Since the press knew next to nothing about Palin before last Friday, it makes perfect sense that there would be someone would check her background. And by-golly did they find a bunch: a pregnant high schooler, a husband with a DUI, an abuse of power scandal; boy I sure didn't see this list on Fox News' "5 things you didn't know about Sarah Palin".
Instead of honing his message for the convention, McCain is now busy chasing his tail by trying to contain his message. The McCain campaign started using the Rovian playbook of "shoot the messenger' by going after the bloggers that pushed the daughter's story.
"Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser, said no matter who the nominee was, the campaign was ready to send a "jump team" to the No. 2's home state to work with the nominee's staff, work with the local media and help handle requests from the national media for information, and answer questions about documents that were part of the review." (link)
Isn't anyone concerned about this tactic?
The campaign is mobilizing their forces to go back to Alaska and manage the flow of information coming out Alaska both at a local and a state level. Instead of letting the information out and allowing the public the ability to make an informed decision, the McCain campaign decided it was more important to control and contain the flow of information to an informed electorate.
Palin will be a just a 72 year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency and no one knows, including many of those in the campaign, anything about her background.
Which is why, when Palin was announced as the VP choice, I was shocked to watch the lemmings instantly throw their 'overwhelming' support to someone that they most certainly had no prior knowledge of.
How else can you explain the onslaught of support by so many for a personality that had such little notoriety outside of her own state?
But now that people are getting to know more about Palin. Unfortunately the information that's coming out wasn't what she wanted released.
She and a number of others say that 'kids are off the table', including her daughter.
Okay; that makes sense. But it appears that only certain kids are off-the-table. If you recall, during her introductory speech in Ohio she talked quite a bit about her family and her children.
She talked about the absence of her eldest son who will be deploying to Iraq in a couple of weeks. She went on to talk about her son's decision to join and to serve. She enjoyed the reception of acceptance and applause for her son. But somehow I missed the part where she fawned on about how proud she was for daughter, that is a high school student, is going to make her a proud grandparent.
She also talked about her wonderful, world champion snowmobiler, card-carrying union man husband. I missed the part where she mentioned the DUI.
It's a bit clear to those that have been watching that Palin didn't go through the same scrutiny as her other VP wanna-be peers; in fact it's almost disingenuous to continue saying so.
The best thing that McCain can do is go back eight years and get back on the straight-talk express and come clean with the electorate.
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8:52 PM, 09 02 2008 | Permalink
Yes, John. The word is McCain's handlers received the nix on supporting McCain in Nov. if he didn't approve of a hard right evangelical Christian type for his VP slot.
This reveals much. First, that McCain is not the decider in his own campaign, as word has it, he wanted Lieberman.
Second, it reveals inordinately poor judgment on McCain's part to not have anticipated that such lack of experience in his 72 years old VP choice negated every argument he ever made against Obama regarding experience. That's not just poor judgment, that is an absence of ability to think and analyze.
Finally, it reveals the factionalization that has set deeply in the GOP, causing the various factions to stumble over each other in their attempts to mount an effective presidential campaign.
Obama's polling has jumped 5 points since Palin's announcement. We should all thank Sen. McCain for being so candid in exposing the fact that he has indeed reached his level of incompetence and then some. He could have hid it much better in the Senate where no one ever asked him what he knew about economics despite his voting on trillions of dollars of government spending and taxes.
Obama appears to be relaxing in the wake of all this candor. That might not be so smart, but, he certainly has less cause to worry about McCain this week than he had last week.
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john trevisani replied to David R. Remer at :
7:26 AM, 09 03 2008 | Permalink
David, i've been seeing polls that are all over the map. Some polls (gallup) shows Barack 49 to McCain 43 but then i hear about polls that are neck and neck. In fact, FNC commentators were remarking about the 'lack of bounce' for Barack.
The Palin pick was such a blunder. They obviously rushed to make the pick because they needed a strong anti-abortion person on the ticket. Instead of picking safer anti-abortion people like Romney the McCain handlers decided to go after the Hillary vote.
Ugh. i'm sure somebody in the McCain camp is wishing that they made a different choice now.
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12:33 AM, 09 03 2008 | Permalink
More and more, I'm convinced McCain's choice for VP makes no sense at all.
But then, there's a lot of things about McCain that make no sense.
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David R. Remer replied to d.a.n at :
6:49 PM, 09 03 2008 | Permalink
One thing does make sense to me now. Why they decided to minimize the opening day ceremonies. There viewership numbers were going to fall far short of the 38 million of the democrat's convention, and they needed to be able to say it was due to Hurricane Gustav instead of the public not being interested in the same numbers as for the Democratic Convention.
My guess, about 22 million will show up in the stats as having watched the Republicans convention. And that brings us to Palin. Without Palin, that number would have been even smaller. The McCain camp knew they could not match or top the Democrats, so they needed come up with some way of getting back into the headlines. Palin was the ticket.
Talk about winning the battle while losing the war. This one takes the cake. The novelty of Palin will wear off in a couple weeks, and having overshadowed McCain in terms of public interest, McCain will not have made the case he needed to make as the challenger to Obama. Unless he can pull an upset at the debates. Not likely, but possible.
Palin is going to get creamed by Biden. Palin's lack of experience in political debate and law education will leave her vulnerable to verbal traps which Biden is competent at laying.
The McCain handlers have been prepping Palin today for her speech like nervous ninneys bringing the wayward daughter out for potential suitor's praying she doesn't flub it. And she probably won't. But, the nervous ninneys will so script her that the viewers will not get a sense of her, only of her handlers.
When the debates come, that will be her undoing. Her scripting by her handlers which forecasts to Biden very accurately what she will be prepared for in the debates. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
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