Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has had a lousy seventy-two hours.<\/p>\n
That’s the only real conclusion that one can draw as news reports about the Republican Vice Presidential pick filter in. She was affiliated with and was a member of a secessionist political party<\/a>, the Alaska Independence Party. She’s hired a lawyer in advance of her deposition in the Alaska State Trooper investigation<\/a> where she’s accused of improperly firing the head of the state’s Safety Commission. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain had apparently only met Palin once<\/b> prior to offering her the Vice Presidential position on his ticket. And then there’s the story that broke today.<\/p>\n All told, these stories look bad<\/i>.<\/p>\n But they look back on John McCain<\/i>.<\/p>\n Did he do any<\/i> background research on his running mate?<\/p>\n Apparently not.<\/p>\n Josh Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo probably lays it out best<\/a> as to what the last seventy-two hours means<\/i>:<\/p>\n Individually, you can come to your own judgment about how consequential these stories are. What they show pretty clearly now — in addition to the news that the McCain campaign is only now sending in a vetting team — is that John McCain didn’t do any serious vetting of Palin before he invited her to join his ticket and, he hopes, become Vice President of the United States.<\/p>\n Fundamentally, of course, this is about John McCain. And the real issue here is what this slapdash decision says about his judgment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Clearly, McCain exercised no<\/i> judgment.<\/p>\n By all indications, Palin appears to be an oppo researcher’s dream<\/i>. A cursory examination of her record indicates that.<\/p>\n And that’s who McCain wants a heartbeat away from the Presidency?<\/p>\n The Sarah Palin pick raises serious issues about John McCain’s fitness to be President. Because if this decision is indicative of McCain’s thought processes, what other<\/i> questionable decisions would a President McCain make?<\/p>\n The question, of course, is how to make that argument in a respectful manner.<\/p>\n This election season — there’s nothing<\/i> else like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has had a lousy seventy-two hours. That’s the only real conclusion that one can draw as news reports about the Republican Vice Presidential pick filter in. She was affiliated with and was a member of a secessionist political party, the Alaska Independence Party. She’s hired a lawyer in advance of herContinue reading “On John McCain and His Lack of Judgment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[559,4108,120,621],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-john-mccain","tag-politics","tag-republican-party","tag-sarah-palin","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}