McCain's Bargain

Hendrik Hertzberg summarizes:

With the selection of Sarah Palin, McCain completes the job of defusing the enmity (and forgoing the honor) he earned in 2000, when he condemned Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance.” His motives in choosing her were entirely tactical and mostlythe mot juste is that of Mike Murphy, once McCain’s top political aide, overheard by an errant microphonecynical. Besides placating the right, those motives included the short-term goal of pre�mpting the weekend news cycles that might otherwise have been devoted to reviewing Obama’s triumphant Democratic Convention. The price that McCain paid, and that could sooner or later be exacted from the nation, was the abandonment of what he had repeatedly called his overriding requirement for a Vice-President: someone who would be ready to take his place at a moment’s notice“you know, immediately.”