I saw this bit over at Atrios, so I went and found the video and transcript of Campbell Brown's commentary last night on CNN, and the point bears repeating: for all of the crazy stories we're starting to hear about Sarah Palin, it is McCain and his advisers who are accountable for his disastrous choice of a running mate:
You [McCain's advisers] are the ones who supposedly vetted her, and then told the American people she was qualified for the job. You are the ones who, after meeting her a couple of times, told us she was ready to be just one heartbeat away from the presidency.
If even half of what you say now is true, then boy, did you try to sell the American people a bill of goods. If Sarah Palin is the reason some voters chose Barack Obama, that is no one's fault but your own.
It's often commented that a presidential nominee's choice of a candidate for Vice President is the first major decision that tells us something about the nominee's potential administration. More than that: it's the only decision that will necessarily have a lasting impact into the new Presidency. It's a common complaint that campaigns are nothing but a heap of promises, a lot of words but no real actions, and who knows if the candidate will truly be willing and able to deliver. To a certain extent that's unfair; after all, standing there and making speeches is just about the only thing a candidate can do. What else can we expect? But the choice of a candidate for Vice President is not like that: the person chosen will really be the Vice President if the ticket wins, and may become President someday (because honestly, we hope it doesn't happen, but replacing an incapacitated President is what the Veep is mainly for). The choice made in the midst of the campaign might actually turn out to be the most far-reaching decision of an entire presidency, before the presidency ever begins, even before it is validated by the voters in the first place.
McCain's choice of Palin was a flat-out insult to the American people, for a variety of reasons that we already know. She was probably a major reason for his defeat, certainly one of the motivators for many Republicans who defected and went for Obama, including some very prominent figures (most notably Colin Powell). Nowadays we're getting a hoot-n-a-half over all the crazy stories about Palin's knuckleheaded misadventure, and there will probably be many more. But let's bear in mind: there are a lot of Republican operatives scrambling to shift the blame for losing a campaign so severely, and some of the were responsible for the choice of Sarah Palin. In all likelihood, these are some of the same jokers leaking the stories.
Brown:
Whatever you may have thought about John McCain's running mate -- about whether she was qualified, prepared or experienced enough for the job -- try to put all of that aside for just a moment, because Sarah Palin is who she is.
She did not become measurably more intelligent or measurably less intelligent during this campaign. Remember, she was only part of the campaign for a matter of nine weeks.
Sarah Palin is who she is, which is why I find it so stunning that the very people who introduced us to her, who told us she would make a great vice president, have now turned on her with a vengeance.
The recent tales of Palin's shenanigans all seem to fit in nicely with her image as an airhead, so that they seem all too easy to believe. But Brown gives an interesting little tidbit: "CNN has found some of their allegations to be patently false." Evidently, CNN has caught someone from the McCain camp lying about Palin -- wouldn't you like to know who it was, and what the phony stories were?
One of Josh Marshall's readers says something similar:
The obvious point that in a losing campaign, many folks will try to throw blame around and hope none of it's stink gets on them; ...
These guys in the McCain camp (whatever faction of it) have been unabashedly lying each and every day for months now, and feverishly projecting their own failures and shortcomings onto their adversary.
Why the hell should anyone believe them now?
Don't confuse Campbell Brown's commentary or my approving diary with a plea of sympathy for Sarah Palin. She was a hate-mongering campaigner, and would have been a clear and present danger to the well-being of humankind if she ever became President. She was wildly ambitious beyond her abilities, a stain on American political culture, and as many in the media chose to ignore, a bipartisan commission of Alaskan politicians determined that she was guilty of abuse of power, right smack in the middle of the campaign.
Nevertheless, the McCainites leaking the stories about are, in all likelihood, playing a game of CYA.
To those top McCain advisers who leaked the little story about seeing Sarah Palin in a towel; to those who called her and her family "Wasilla hillbillies" while using her to stoke class warfare with red meat speeches and an anti-elitist message; to those who claim she didn't know Africa was a continent; to those McCain aides who say she is the reason they lost this election: Can I please remind you of one thing? You picked her.
Many of us agreed that McCain's concession speech was one of his best moments in the entire campaign, especially when he took on personal responsibility for the loss. Unfortunately, it's rare for a national politician to accept accountability so fully, and that moment made McCain look like the long-forgotten honorable man that many had once believed him to be (naively or not). But of course, accountability means what it means. McCain chose to surround himself with the advisers who would recommend such a running mate; he chose to accept their recommendation. It was one of the most important decisions of his life, and it was a failure of historic dimensions. John McCain has no one but himself to blame for the disaster that was Sarah Palin.