From the Potomac to Prince Edward Sound, politicos and pundits spent the past two days frantically searching for the answer to the question:
What was he thinking?
Why, indeed, did John McCain put a patently unqualified person on the Republican Party's presidential ticket?
The answer lay in plain sight since ten days before anybody asked the question.
Reporter Elisabeth Bumiller revealed it in the August 19, 2008 New York Times.
Talk of McCain’s No. 2 Concerns Conservatives
Bumiller wrote:
Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is a close friend and traveling companion of Mr. McCain, raised the idea of a running mate who supports abortion rights last week when Mr. McCain met with social conservatives in Birmingham, Mich. Mr. Graham asked if the group would rather have a running mate who opposed abortion but caused the Republicans to lose or a running mate who supported abortion rights and caused the party to win, recalled James Muffett, a social conservative who attended the meeting. Quite a few people, said Mr. Muffett, said they preferred to lose.
The selection of Sarah Palin, by McCain or more powerful people, was not about winning an election so much as it was a concession made in hope of saving a marriage: the union of Evangelical Christian bride with greed-is-good neoconservative groom.
If that odd couple breaks up, the Republican Party will not soon recover.
The bride is flirting with another man. He's tall, dark and handsome. He's confident and very popular. And he promises to treat her better than her cold and calculating husband does. She's thinking she might run off with him.