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.
Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process
New York Times
September 1, 2008
This does seem somewhat backwards -- like, if you'll excuse the metaphor, putting the condom on after having sex.
How this is supposed to jibe with the McCain campaign's insistence that Gov. Palin was thoroughly vetted before she was picked, I don't know. If this match can, rightly, be compared to a speed date, then I guess the "vetting" was the equivalent of taking 30 seconds to glance at your date's drivers licence before heading for the sack. Yep, he/she is over 16. Turn down the lights, put on the Marvin Gaye.
There is precedent, of course: Invade Iraq, then check to see if Saddam really had WMDs; make Mike Brown head of FEMA, then check to see if he actually knew anything about disaster response, etc. But I thought the whole idea was to get away from that kind of "leadership" (or at least fool the voters into thinking McCain would do things differently.)
I'm not sure what a bevy of GOP lawyers is supposed to do up in Alaska now -- other than provide one-stop shopping for investigative reporters seeking comment. Maybe the mission is to lean (heavily, if necessary) on various Republican functionaries up there who don't seem to be totally with the program, like these people:
State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to tell her the news. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
House Speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez, was also astonished at the news. He didn't want to get into the issue of her qualifications. "She's old enough," Harris said. "She's a U.S. citizen."
Clearly, some of the party faithful need a quick reminder of all the things -- good and bad -- that could happen to them in a hypothetical (and getting more hypothetical by the day) McCain administration.
But you know, it's a little late: toothpaste out of the tube and all of that.
When I suggested a couple of diaries ago that the best course for the Democrats might be to simply wait and see what shakes out of Palin's Alaskan tree, I had no idea so many things would start falling out of it so quickly. But I'm glad to see Obama come out and warn his troops away from the really personal stuff. It's already clear that Palin offers an embarrassment of riches for the Obama campaign, and a wealth of embarrassments for McCain's. There's no need to get greedy -- or cruel and vindicative, which is the one thing that could cause this whole freeding frenzy to circle back and start munching on the Democrats. McCain's people wanted to toss the pregnancy story into Hurricane Gustav? Good. Let it be buried in the muck.
Except for one obvious point: When Sarah Palin praises her 17-year-old daughter for "choosing" to give birth to a baby conceived out of wedlock (and assures us that she is doing it of her own free will) it should never be forgotten that she (and her party) would, if they could, deny that same right of choice to every other American woman, without exception.
Update 9/2 1:30 am ET: More hilarity from the AP, which rushes to assure us that yes, John McCain did too vet his vice presidential sweetheart, most thoroughly:
McCain camp's detailed review of Palin
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Sarah Palin's path to the Republican ticket started with her name on a list — and a team of some 25 people poring through public records searching for trouble spots without her knowledge. Then came the 70-question survey and a nearly three-hour interview.
The review officially ended Thursday, when John McCain asked the Alaska governor to be his running mate.
First note the Pravda-like headline, which isn't even a complete sentence, much less a balanced assessment of the evidence at hand. It states as established fact something that is now in considerable dispute, to put it mildly.
The story then goes on, at some length, quoting McCain campaign officials who swear, on their mother's bibles, that they crossed all the i's and dotted all the t's (or maybe it was the other way around.) It then finishes with a final quote (or "kicker") from McCain's vetter-in-chief, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr.:
"We came out of it knowing all that we could know at the time," he said.
Not a shred of irony -- from source or reporter.
(I'm beginning to wonder if maybe when McCain said "vet her," Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. thought he was supposed to check and see whether her pets were healthy.)
So that's the AP's contribution to the discussion. And I'm glad to see things are working out so well for Ron Fournier in that flack job he took with the McCain campaign.
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