OH, John McCain, we hardly knew ye . . .

By l.t. Dravis

JUNEAU, ALASKA – MONDAY, September 1, 2008 - Oh, oh, some Republican campaign insiders are worried that John McCain’s first ‘presidential decision’ reveals something about his judgment that voters won’t like.

He chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his Vice-Presidential running mate and though she’s only been on the national scene for a few days now, we find out that McCain didn’t bother to seriously ‘vet’ her.

Why?

Could it be that McCain’s need to attract attention to his campaign, to satisfy the hard-core conservative base he can’t reach, and/or to grab the hearts and votes of disaffected Hillary-ites, was so desperate that he jumped at the first female running mate he could find . . . without really knowing what he was getting into?

Now we learn that McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, snookered us over the weekend when he said that all the final VP candidates underwent a complete records review and a FBI background check.

The FBI said today that it didn’t do a background check on Palin or any of McCain’s other choices.

What the . . . ?

So, who’s checking out Governor Palin, now?

While McCain campaign operatives scramble to Alaska now to do what they should have done weeks ago, the press has been doing its inevitably thorough job and here’s what they dug up so far:

· The Governor has hired an attorney to represent her in the Alaska legislative ethics investigation regarding whether she abused her power when she fired a public safety commissioner because he refused to fire Mrs. Palin’s former brother-in-law

· Governor Palin evidently belonged to the Alaska Independence Party which has favored Alaska’s secession from the United States

· The governor’s husband evidently has a DUI arrest record dating back nearly 22 years ago

· The Palin’s 17 year old daughter, Bristol, is 5-months pregnant and she is supposedly going to marry the father

So what?

Who cares?

As far as ‘TrooperGate’ is concerned, let the abuse of power investigation take its course. Besides, what’s wrong with Sarah hiring an attorney? Don’t they all do that?

Sarah Palin belonged to the Alaska Independence Party, the party that has called for Alaska’s secession from the union. Big deal! She belonged to the AIP seventeen or eighteen years ago. What possible difference could that make today? Alaska isn’t going anyplace, is it?

Sarah’s husband has a DUI! That’s nothing! Bush and Cheney have five or six or seven DUIs, combined! Mr. Palin has a long way to go before he could ever catch up with the masters!

So the Palin’s 17 year old daughter is five months pregnant! Plenty of teenage girls from good families get pregnant every year! Who cares?

Like the ‘stuff’ you read in tabloids, none of this means anything at all!

Nevertheless, because we seem to be learning something new about Governor Palin every day, reasonable people are beginning to wonder: What might we learn about Governor Palin tomorrow, next week, or next month? And, will what we learn damage the McCain/Palin candidacy?

With questions about the Vice-Presidential candidate distracting the campaign on this, the shaky first day of the Republican Convention, some Republican strategists worry that voters will lose confidence in John McCain’s judgment and will turn to the Obama/Biden ticket in November.

Is it fair for voters to question Senator McCain’s judgment to be an effective president?

After eight years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, voters seem to be more concerned today than ever bout a candidate’s judgment, or lack thereof.

After all, the President of the United States must be capable of confronting any number of high-stake domestic and international problems at any time with reasoned, thoughtful, prescient judgment.

Since we measure judgment as a candidate’s ability to assess a situation objectively enough to come up with a sound conclusion, it is more than reasonable to question McCain’s judgment in this instance.

We can’t separate McCain’s judgment from the process he used to make this decision.

According to sources close to the campaign, Senator McCain didn’t even consider Palin as a serious candidate until he realized within the last week that the party faithful would never accept Independent Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

Campaign insiders told McCain that unless he did something to shake up his campaign, to draw media and public attention away from a potential Obama/Biden juggernaut, he’d risk watching his decades old desire to become President of the United States fade away . . . forever.

So, McCain turned away from Lieberman, the experienced Senator, and snapped toward Palin, the relatively unknown, inexperienced Governor of a state with fewer people than many American cities.

Because McCain would make history by selecting Palin as the first ever female Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, strategists pointed out that the campaign would benefit from lots of media attention . . . especially important after the Obama media fest that dominated the airwaves for four prior days straight.

As if he wanted to get the decision behind him and move on, John McCain had only one face-to-face interview with Sarah Palin and that was last Thursday, the day before he was scheduled to announce the name of his running mate.

Aides say that the moment the interview was over, McCain immediately asked Palin to be his running mate.

She said yes, he made history, the campaign got media attention, and America began to wonder.

Does John McCain have the judgment to be president?

Guess we'd better ask Sarah Palin.

Copyright © 2008 by l.t. Dravis. All rights reserved.

If you have questions, comments, or concerns, Email me at LTDAssociates@msn.com (goes right to my desk) and since I personally answer every Email, I look forward to hearing from you soon.