Palin: trickle becoming deluge

When Palin was announced, I heard about an ongoing investigation into her in Alaska. The basics are: she fired the guy in charge of the State Police because he wouldn't fire a trooper. Said trooper was the ex-husband of her sister and involved in an ugly custody dispute.

I told Mrs. noternie I didn't think it could be a big deal. Certainly the McCain campaign looked into this and everything else about her before making her the VP choice, right? How could they not?

Um, well, maybe they didn't. NYTimes story says the vetting was thin and very late. When I finished I was reminded of a kid waiting until the last minute to do a research project. They have a lot of time and decent idea for the project. Then they wait until the last week to do it, find they can't do it and have to change subjects at the last minute.

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.

So, as bad as Palin looks--and there are lots of other things* trickling out on her-- this starts to pile up on McCain, too. If he has this much time with a decision that's this big and appears to have done such a slipshod job, what's going to happen when he gets in the White House?

Also, some Maverick. Couldn't get his campaign to go along with his first two choices for VP.

*HT to Quriltai