McCain and Palin: A Question of Judgment

It's not clear how much John McCain knew about Sarah Palin before nominating her.

According to NBC News, McCain had only met Palin once before yesterday, and according to ABC News her selection was made hastily and with only a few days of proper vetting.

Apparently McCain wanted to nominate his friend "Traitor Joe" Lieberman, but his campaign consultants persuaded him that this would result in disaster at the Republican National Convention.

Instead, McCain's advisors suggested three other candidates that had been properly vetted: Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, former Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, and former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

McCain rejected all three candidates, saying they were "too boring" and that he needed to "shake things up."

And apparently he could not shake things up with competent Republican women like Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Olympia Snowe, or Susan Collins. No, he needed to find a faded ex-beauty queen like his wife.

The result: McCain selected a poorly qualified woman he did not know solely because of her gender and appearance. Yes, that's right: Sarah Palin is the ultimate affirmative action candidate.

But bad judgment and rash thinking are not problems unique to John McCain; they are also characteristics he shares with Sarah Palin.

It turns out that "maverick" is simply a nice term for being a reckless ego-besotted idiot.

Consider this story told by The Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Gov. Palin's opted to board a jet from Dallas in April while about to deliver a child. Gov. Palin, who was eight months pregnant, says she felt a few contractions shortly before she was to give a keynote speech to an energy summit of governors in Dallas. But she says she went ahead with it after her doctor in Alaska advised her to put her feet up to rest. "I was not going to miss that speech," she says.

She rushed so quickly from the podium afterwards that Texas Gov. Rick Perry nervously asked if she was about to deliver the baby then. She made it to the airport, and gave birth hours after landing in Anchorage to Trig, who is diagnosed with Down Syndrome. "Maybe they shouldn't have let me fly, but I wasn't showing much so they didn't know," she says.

And we are supposed to put the fate of the nation in this woman's hands?

I would not let her take care of my children for the afternoon!.

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