McCain: No, really, we vetted her!
Sid9
political, issues. The campaign called a New York Times story Tuesday that
raised questions about the vetting "fiction." That story quoted Alaska
Republicans saying the campaign never called around Palin's world to find
anything out about her. "I started calling around and asking, and I have not
been able to find one person that was called," former Alaska House Speaker
Gail Phillips told the Times. McCain aides admit that only a very small
number of close advisors knew who McCain was considering. They seem to have
relied mostly on Palin's own answers to their questions; whether the
campaign did much additional due diligence on her isn't entirely clear. (No
one searched the archives of the Wasilla newspaper, which are available only
on microfilm, because they worried that would tip people off that Palin was
being considered.)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/03/palin/print.html
McCain: No, really, we vetted her!
As revelations about Sarah Palin mount, the McCain team scrambles to dispel
reports that they didn't know what they were getting into.
By Mike Madden
Sep. 03, 2008 | A few hours before dawn Tuesday, the Intrade predictions
market started taking bets on a new proposition: that Sarah Palin would drop
off the Republican ticket before the election. Speculators started buying a
few hours later; by mid-afternoon, nearly 2,000 trades had been made by
people hoping to make a quick buck off of the revelations about the Alaska
governor that kept leaking out the day before. (Her husband had a DUI, she
once flirted with a secessionist Alaska political party and there was also
something or another about her daughter).
Those bets might, eventually pay off. But only if John McCain and his senior
staff have a sudden change of heart. McCain's aides, suddenly finding
themselves on the defensive about a V.P. pick they still think is a stroke
of genius, are pushing back hard against the idea that Palin slipped through
their selection process somehow, and against reports in the media that
detail just who they didn't call when vetting her. (The campaign has even,
apparently, decided to double down on Palin's popularity with the family
values crowd; Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin's boyfriend and the father of the
child she is expecting, reportedly will join the Palins at the convention.)
"She's fully vetted," senior strategist Steve Schmidt insisted. McCain
himself chimed in Tuesday from Philadelphia. "The vetting process was
completely thorough, and I'm grateful for the results," he told reporters in
response to shouted questions.
If you ask McCain's team, the skepticism about Palin's experience is totally
unwarranted. "She's more qualified than Obama," senior advisor Mark Salter
told Salon, citing her 13 years in elected office (including her time on the
Wasilla, Alaska, city council). "He has no business being president."
Campaign aides seem unwilling to drop the line that Palin's command of the
Alaska National Guard gives her an important credential, even though it
sometimes sounds a little silly coming from Republican loyalists. "She's run
her own military," said Joseph LeBlanc, 82, a delegate from Mountain Home,
Ark. "Alaska is the biggest land [area] state," said Betty Kiene, an
alternate from Piedmont, Okla. "Her neighbors are Canada and Russia, which
means she's dealt with international problems."
The McCain campaign sees Palin as more than tough enough to withstand the
feeding frenzy here this week -- and in fact, they think it might help her.
Schmidt said the more the media digs into the story of Bristol Palin's
pregnancy, the less the public will respect the press (and the more voters
will buy the McCain team's assertion that Barack Obama is getting a free
pass from reporters). The campaign ratcheted that argument up Tuesday,
canceling a McCain interview with CNN after the network's Campbell Brown
bodyslammed campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds Monday night.
They've put veteran operatives from the Bush administration (and two Karl
Rove-led Bush campaigns) in charge of getting Palin ready for prime time --
former White House speechwriter Matt Scully is writing her convention speech
(and wrote the remarks she gave on Friday) and former Bush strategist Tucker
Eskew is working with Palin on press strategy. Senior aides said the
campaign also dispatched a team of consultants and lawyers to Alaska to
basically take over Palin's political operation. The lawyers were,
allegedly, there to help the communications people understand vetting
documents so they could spin them. The McCain team denies they are the
after-the-fact vetting team described in the media, but at the very least
they must also be trying to figure out if any new surprises are in the
Alaska pipeline.
So far, the McCain team says they saw all the questions about her coming. In
conversations at the convention, McCain aides indicated the end of their
months-long vice presidential search came quickly, but not necessarily in
haste. By the time McCain had settled on Palin last Tuesday, she had already
filled out a 70-question vetting form full of personal, "intrusive"
questions. She'd turned over financial documents and (apparently, since the
McCain campaign sent around her entire voter registration history on
Tuesday) political ones, as well. (A Republican consultant who isn't working
for McCain but is familiar with the questions two other V.P. finalists were
asked told Salon it seems Palin went through exactly the same process.)
Palin flew down to McCain's Sedona, Ariz., cabin in secret on Wednesday and
met for three or four hours with Schmidt and senior advisor Mark Salter,
before meeting with McCain in private for an hour Thursday. Before McCain
offered her the job, he went through the pros and cons of picking her with
top aides.
But it does seem like most of the vetting focused on legal, not political,
issues. The campaign called a New York Times story Tuesday that raised
questions about the vetting "fiction." That story quoted Alaska Republicans
saying the campaign never called around Palin's world to find anything out
about her. "I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to
find one person that was called," former Alaska House Speaker Gail Phillips
told the Times. McCain aides admit that only a very small number of close
advisors knew who McCain was considering. They seem to have relied mostly on
Palin's own answers to their questions; whether the campaign did much
additional due diligence on her isn't entirely clear. (No one searched the
archives of the Wasilla newspaper, which are available only on microfilm,
because they worried that would tip people off that Palin was being
considered.)
It's true that McCain -- or at least some people close to him -- wanted to
go with a candidate who was, incidentally, already fully vetted, albeit by
Al Gore's team eight years ago. Some of the McCain inner circle was set on
Joe Lieberman until conservatives shot that idea down faster than Sarah
Palin shooting a moose. But Palin seems to have appealed to McCain for some
of the same reasons that he wanted Lieberman in the first place; her image
as a combative reformer fits McCain's own self-image, and dodging a safe
pick like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty in favor of a little-known Alaskan is
a move right out of the McCain mythology.
But that's the problem. So far, in fact, what's tripping McCain up about
Palin isn't what he didn't know about her, it's what he did. Is it a good
thing that, as a McCain aide told me, one of the reasons McCain likes her is
that she has some of the same enemies he does in Alaska? The impulsive
decision to run with Palin because she seemed like a kindred spirit is,
indeed, the kind of thing that McCain used to do all the time, both during
his 2000 campaign and during the dark days in 2007 when his campaign had
imploded and he was running the whole thing on a wing and a prayer from his
"Straight Talk Express" bus. It definitely isn't the kind of thing that
helped him pull even with Obama in polls last month with a disciplined,
focused campaign. And depending on who wins the race to define Palin, it may
not be the kind of thing that convinces voters that McCain -- and not
Obama -- ought to be the man to lead the country for the next four years.
-- By Mike Madden
None O' Yer Bidness
"Sid9" <si...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:1mIvk.21856$XT1....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
They never even did an FBI check on her.
Joe
Who does McCain think he's fooling, He only met her once or twice and
only chose her because the religious right told him he couldn't choose
Liberman. Palin was 2nd choice, an afterthought.
Sid9
"Joe" <josep...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b1afce82-de89-4c18...@n38g2000prl.googlegroups.com...
Or...he was turned down by his first choice and to do a hurry up check on
Palin....time for the announcement was against him
Rob
>
> Who does McCain think he's fooling, He only met her once or twice and
> only chose her because the religious right told him he couldn't choose
> Liberman. Palin was 2nd choice, an afterthought.
KKKlintax only met Gore once or twice before he was picked as veep
Sid9
"Rob" <R...@rob.rob> wrote in message
news:pvRvk.21827$IB6....@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
Gore was well known.
Gore had a long history in politics on the national scene
30 year in the House, the Senate and as Vice-president,
given unprecedented significant duties and responsibilities
by Bill Clinton.
You, like many of your RRR counterparts never check your
facts....you shoot from the hip just as bush,jr and McCain
do...without thinking about the consequences of your acts.
OK on Usenet...sucks for the president of the United States