A new NY Times story reveals that a GOP vetting team only arrived in Alaska the day before Palin's nomination was announced--and the same day that McCain offered her the position. Thus, there was no vetting of her before she was selected, contrary to what the GOP has been saying since questions started being raised about her.
Hmmmm. The GOP lying about its secretive VP candidate. Who'da thunk it?
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. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin....
Mr. McCain's advisers said repeatedly on Monday that Ms. Palin was "thoroughly vetted," a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check. A McCain aide said the campaign was well aware of the ethics investigation and had looked into it.
Again, the central issue here is McCain's character: his judgement, his integrity, his temperament, his leadership. He's not even been nominated yet, and he's already acting like Nixon in the last days of Watergate.
The NYT story goes into some detail about how the vetting wasn't done:
In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.
"They didn't speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn't speak to anyone in the business community," said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.
Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.
"I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called," Ms. Phillips said. "I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven't found anybody who was asked anything."
The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin's background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.
State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. "I heard not a word, not a single contact," he said.
On a less surprising, but still significant note, the story also contains confirmation of what we all suspected about how the choice was made, as well as how inadequately it was prepared for. McCain had wanted either Lieberman or Ridge, but both are pro-choice, and the GOP establishment simply wouldn't let him go there. So:
Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.
With time running out - and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable - he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain's list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months....
In the final stages, two Republicans familiar with the process said, Mr. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, emerged as a key advocate for Ms. Palin.
Losing trajectory? Vetting process that lasted one to two months? The campaign manager?
Well, I guess that's an improvement over Cheney. At least they didn't let Palin choose herself. After all, she wasn't qualified to select herself, since she doesn't know what the VP does.
This is laughable. But it's also deadly serious.
This story from the Times has everything in it that's needed to disqualify McCain from the presidency. His lack of character is manifest six says from Sunday. His lack of integrity. His lack of judgment. His lack of principle. His lack of resolve. His lack of honesty. His haphazard decsion-making, and his half-assed excuses, "explainations" and lies.
There is nothing in all this that's the least bit reassuring that he could handle the job of being his own campaign manager, much less handle one day in the Oval Office. He's like George Bush without Karl Rove. He's not a disaster waiting to happen. He's a disaster already happening.
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