Let's call it out...Palin would've been a great pick if she didn't have an unmarried pregnant daughter.
That piece of information didn't come out until a couple days after the selection, and until it did, even CNN was calling the Palin pick a stroke of genius by the McCain campaign. However, it wasn't long after the reveal of Bristol's pregnancy that the left-wing media began to slut-shame her and even Sarah by proxy. Yes...the same part of the political spectrum that is now obsessed with the #metoo movement had no problem calling Bristol every name in the book. The story has it that the Obama campaign didn't condone using Bristol as an object of the campaign, but the left had plenty of surrogates doing it for them.
It all became moot once the market collapsed (McCain's chances of winning the election dropped to 0 at that point), but many people forget that ever-so-brief window of time when Palin was considered just the jolt of energy that the sleepy McCain campaign needed at that point. Arguments about the effect Palin ultimately had on the election results usually ring specious to me, but nobody can make the supposition that she was a bad pick from day one.
It wasn't her pregnant unmarried daughter, it was that Sarah Palin was totally ignorant of most basic facts regarding international affairs, economics, and current events. This gradually became known as she interviewed with major domestic news outlets. Now, it is possible that Americans would have tolerated such ignorance had the economy continued to sing, but once it hit the skids people didn't want such an ignoramus a few heartbeats away from the presidency. I think America's rejection of such ignorance in 2008 made me overly confident that they would do so again in 2016, given Donald Trump's even more egregious ignorance being displayed proudly on a near-hourly basis. But perhaps the economy was on stronger footing and people were more comfortable with an idiot for president, or perhaps being a moron is an acceptable trait in a male politician but not a female one. Extremely disconcerting either way..
This was more the fault of the McCain campaign than Palin herself. She obviously wasn’t vetted, but the campaign was looking for a Hail Mary pass. She was who she was...she wasn’t going to become a foreign policy expert just because she was selected as a VP candidate.
The most disturbing part of this whole story is that McCain actually believes one different decision would have actually made a difference in that disaster of an election.
The truth is that while she was actually a fairly competent Governor and a breath of fresh air in the very corrupt Alaska GOP (she ran against Murko’s shadiness) she was grotesquely unprepared for the national stage. Now, the issues she was expected to command as a VP pick we’re not the issues she was expected to command in Alaska, so the McCain team definitely didn’t prepare her properly or do their due diligence. She was a terrible choice all around.
