From Todd Purdum’s new piece in Vanity Fair …
None of McCain’s still-loyal soldiers will say negative things about Palin on the record. Even thinking such thoughts privately is painful for them, because there is ultimately no way to read McCain’s selection of Palin as reflecting anything other than an appalling egotism, heedlessness, and lack of judgment in a man whose courage, tenacity, and character they have extravagantly admired–and as reflecting, too, an unsettling willingness on their own part to aid and abet him. They all know that if their candidate–a 72-year-old cancer survivor–had won the presidency, the vice-presidency would be in the hands of a woman who lacked the knowledge, the preparation, the aptitude, and the temperament for the job.
It’s a high bar to find shocking new revelations about Palin’s character and political identity. But this piece may bring home how truly shocking a decision it was for McCain to pick Palin. Not a bad decision or an ill-considered one, but one that in single stroke showed McCain had no business being president. An angry, resentful, small-time crooked pol. And she really could have been president because of McCain’s recklessness. Read Purdum’s piece. But I have little doubt and some direct knowledge that we’ll be hearing new shocking details of who this woman is for months, perhaps years, to come.
