From TPM Reader TH …
I think there’s a connection between the mansion-cum-middle school picture and the lousy speech prepared for McCain. It has to do with the stress that Palin’s nomination puts on the GOP ticket, on the resources she necessarily diverts from McCain. Whatever you think of the Palin speech, whether it was cynical or alienating to anyone outside the base, it was solidly written. I’d even say well written. McCain’s wasn’t. It was decidedly second rate, not just badly delivered but clumsily written (except for the part about his POW experience, which I assume he has on file: that worked). How did that happen? Everyone knows McCain is a bad public speaker, so one would assume his campaign would it least give him a rock solid text to work from. But I suspect the campaign only has so many first-rate people on hand, and all of those people in the McCain campaign were tasked with taking care of Palin, leaving the top of the ticket to the second-stringers.
