Amateur Hour

Another sign that the Republican Party has divested itself of all competent people is that they have this firecracker of a Vice President, but they did such a craptacular job of vetting her that they have to send her up to Alaska for a week off the campaign trail to hide her away.

CHUCK TODD:Well Ron, We’ve been able to see that there are a few folks who are saying [Palin is] actually going to hole up in Alaska for a little, she’s got to see her son off who’s going to be deployed to Iraq, so we may not see her on the campaign trail for a little while.

RON ALLEN: Yes she hasn’t been home for a long time, and she’s obviously got some business to deal with there.

Usually, what you do after introducing someone to the nation, and getting a positive reception, is you CAPITALIZE on it. But the McCain campaign is so terrified of an unscripted moment or a need to answer questions that they literally have to send her 6,000 miles away from the media glare. In fact, they're going to try and get through the entire campaign without having a question lobbed at their VP nominee.

Now, aside from this being a direct threat to democracy and the desire to show the nation only propaganda and nothing else, this is just bad strategy. Here's the one asset to the ticket - really the only thing firing up the base right now - and they sock her away. I know there's a lot for her to work on in Alaska - there's that road to nowhere to build, with $100 million in taxpayer money connecting about 10,000 people to one another, and there's that ethics inquiry to squash, and a subpoena to avoid, and there are all those issues to learn about, except for energy, where she's so smart that she actually believes, contra George Bush and John McCain, that we can totally drill our way out of crisis, and her perspective is great for Alaskans and oil companies but bad for humanity... so yeah, maybe she needs a week or so.

But still, taking your best asset off the trail with 8 weeks to go until the election? That's just dumb. And it's not like it'll stop the media hounds, either.

Who the heck is running the McCain campaign, and are they trying to lose?