The McCain campaign has finally realized how badly picking Sarah Palin as his running-mate reflects on the candidate. To rebut the reports that "the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin’s potential pitfalls," they’ve trotted out an anonymous aide to provide details of the vetting they did.
Before she was chosen to be Sen. John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin submitted to a three-hour interview with the head of his vice presidential search team, and responded to a 70-question form that included "intrusive personal questions," a senior campaign aide said Monday.
[snip]
The process included what aides described as a full search of public documents and videos of her speeches. That included a review of Alaska newspapers, but not Palin’s local newspaper because aides worried that going through back issues would indicate that she was under consideration to be McCain’s running mate.
This anonymous aide would have you believe that they’ve found everything that has been amusing and appalling us all weekend.
"Nothing that has come out did not come out in the vet. She was fully vetted," the senior aide said.
But here’s the list of things they claim to have found in the vetting process (the list given in this AP article is identical):
- Troopergate
- Bristol’s pregnancy
- Todd Palin’s DUI
- Her ticket for fishing without a license
- Her earlier support for Pat Buchanan
Now compare that to one of the lists that tries to capture Palin in all her wonderfulness (here’s one from Bowers). There are a few things missing:
- Palin’s claim to oppose the Bridge to Nowhere was a lie
- Palin not only directed one of the 527s McCain claims to hate–it supported profile in corruption, Ted Stevens
- Palin was also a big fan of the earmarks that McCain claims to oppose as a central plank of his campaign
- Palin, the apparent Veep candidate for a campaign whose theme got changed to "Country First" to accommodate such an inexperienced Veep, has ties to a secessionist groups whose motto is "Alaska First"
You think some enterprising journalist will get around to asking why McCain’s campaign neglected to mention these items in its list of things they learned before picking Sarah Palin to be their Veep?
Did they learn her reformist credentials were just a front for the same old Alaskan Republican corruption and not want to admit that they didn’t care? Or didn’t they find those tidbits?
Likewise, did they know that their candidate has, in the past, aligned with a group that puts state before country, but that they thought white radical separatist groups were okay, just not black ones? Or was that, too, news to them?
They claim they found all this stuff. But either they didn’t–and don’t want to admit how incompetent their supposedly thorough vetting process was. Or, they did, and don’t want to admit they don’t care that their candidate is a radical with the same fondness for corruption that brought down the Republican party.
In either case, it still doesn’t say much for McCain’s seriousness about picking his VP nominee.