Sarah Sinks It

I haven't been of the mind that John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was one of the definitive issues of this election. We've got catastrophic war for empire, the Great Depression II, the first black president...plenty of more important stuff to think about. Although like all liberal bloggers I've expressed dismay about her candidacy, I've also been thinking that she was a bit too easy to gang up on, that that courted a kind of populist backlash and besides, the real issue here is John McCain and his fitness to be making this kind of decision. This morning, though, an hour before Meet the Press and two days before Election Day, we wake up to this amazing prank interview with Palin by two notorious shock jocks out of Quebec. The issue is not that her staff is so inexperienced that a phony phone call got through (that sounds like how they're going to try to spin it). The issue is, once again, how she handled herself in an unmanaged encounter. She was so excited, I think, that she failed to listen to any of the substance of what was being said, and so the fault is more a lack of seriousness of purpose that can perhaps be chalked up to a lack of experience. That's the charitable take. But I can't see even the most loyal GOP operatives gritting their teeth and defending her over this one. I won't mention any of the details other than the cartoonish fake-French accent. The rest I leave for you to explore and digest on your own. And I think that this incident is a sort of tipping point, if we haven't passed it already, where it can definitively be said that the selection of Palin has been a disaster, just all by itself, for this campaign. And I say that in full knowledge that we will very likely be living with this person for years to come.