Marc reports:
Sen. John McCain knew. A few members of his senior staff knew. Most members of his senior staff did not know. Palin’s spokesman in Alaska did not know. Palin’s campaign-appointed spokesman did not know. McCain staffers — at different levels of the campaign — are a bit stunned.
The usual partisan suspects are pouncing on yours truly for wanting the McCain-Palin campaign to release Palin’s medical records for the past year to rebut for good and all the rumors on the Internets and the very, very strange chronology surrounding the pregnancy and birth of Trig Palin. It is, apparently, vile, evil and a function of AIDS dementia to wonder what the truth is and ask the McCain campaign to provide it. So I hope Dean Barnett and John Podhoretz will eviscerate Michael Goldfarb, their former uber-neocon comrade, as well:
In an unguarded moment last night, McCain Report blogger Michael Goldfarb replied to my question of whether there’s any truth to the rumor that Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome child is actually her daughter’s with the following less-than-confidence-inspiring comment: "Well, I don’t… think so."
Marc files a dispatch on McCain’s minimal vetting of Palin. All you can say from this – regardless of what happens with this Desperate Housewives subplot beginning to play out – is that McCain is more incompetent as an executive than Bush:
As the Palin pick turns 72 hours old, McCain’s campaign is learning as much about her from the media and from Democrats as they are from what minimal political preparation they had…
They’ve bragged that Palin opposed the famous "Bridge to Nowhere," only to learn that Palin supported the project and even told residents of Ketchikan that they weren’t "nowhere" to her. After the national outcry, she decided to spend the funds allocated to the bridge for something else. Actually, maybe it’s more fair to say that coincident with the national outcry, she changed her mind. The story shows her political judgment, but it is not a reformer’s credential.
Likewise, though she cut taxes as mayor of Wassila, she raised the sales tax, making her hardly a tax cutter.
She denied pressuring the state’s chief of public safety to fire her sister-in-law’s husband even though there’s mounting evidence that the impetus did indeed come from her.
Ostensibly to clear her name, Palin asked her attorney general to open an independent investigation—the legislature had already been investigating. (I am told that the campaign was aware of the ethics complaint filed against her but accepts Palin’s account.)
McCain’s campaign seemed unaware that she supported a windfalls profits tax on oil companies and that she is more skeptical about human contributions to global warming than McCain is.
They did not know that she took trips as the mayor of Wasilla to beg for earmarks.
They did not know that she told a television interviewer this summer that she did not fully understand what it is that a vice president does.
You know what this pick remind me of? Invading a country with no plans for what to do once you got there.
In other words: doing their job. And the McCain camp is appalled:
A senior McCain campaign official said the McCain camp was appalled that these rumors had not only been spread around liberal blog sites and partisan Democrats, but also were the subject of heightened interest from mainstream news media.
Now they’ve cleared the air on this – and good for them – what harm would it do to release the medical records showing that Sarah Palin delivered Trig on April 18 in Wasilla? This is not hard: there must be an obstetrician, medical records, and data that can easily refute this rumor. It is not out of the ordinary either: candidates routinely issue medical records. So let’s have them. And then we can move on.
So that explains the wedding ring I spotted. From the Palin family:
"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents.
As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support. "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates."
Now all we need is confirmation from the obstetrician who delivered Sarah’s baby, Trig.
The Palin pick does break the mold:
"I think she is the most inexperienced person on a major-party ticket in modern history," said presidential historian Matthew Dallek. That includes Spiro T. Agnew, Richard Nixon’s first vice president, who was governor of a medium-sized state, Maryland, for two years, and before that, executive of suburban Baltimore County, the expansive jurisdiction that borders and exceeds in population the city of Baltimore.
It also includes George H.W. Bush’s vice president, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle, who had served in the House and Senate for 12 years before taking office. And it also includes New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who served three terms in the House before Walter Mondale chose her in 1984 as the first female candidate on a major-party ticket.
Again, I think experience, while important, is not the really salient issue here. The lack of any record of even interest in foreign policy is the issue. I’ve still not been able to find a single statement of hers on foreign policy apart from that Alaska Business Monthly embarrassment, when she said she’d heard of the surge "on the news." Anyone else found anything yet?
Sarah Palin seems to have been invented by Stephen Colbert – true believer, gun-lover, relentless foe of polar bears, sister with nine kids and no father in the house, caribou killer – but this Stewart clip is a pretty good kick-off to what will be a rich late-night comedy political season:
Adding Palin – and Romney and Huckabee – gave him his best ever turnout yesterday. I’d wager that avoiding Bush and Cheney at the convention is a relief.
After the boos of yesterday, Sarah Palin drops the Clinton praise from her stump speech.
The Dish 