By: Jonathan Martin

Reading Rich Lowry’s interview excerpts with former McCain chief Rick Davis about the Palin pick, I tend to believe there was as much downside as benefit in keeping it a surprise  Yes, the out-of-the-blue pick instantly stepped on Obama’s convention speech and gave McCain a burst heading into his convention. But the last-minute and hush-hush nature selection of Palin also brought subsequent problems, not the least of which was working with somebody neither the candidate nor any of his staff had a relationship with or, really, even knew in the slightest.  

Then there were the more mundane issues that came with such an eleventh-hour move.

On, for example, the clothes, Davis says:

“We flew her out from Alaska to Arizona to Ohio to introduce her to the world and take control of her life. She didn’t think ‘dress for the convention,’ because it might have just been a nice day trip to Arizona if she didn’t click with John. Very little prep had been done and, if it had, we might have gotten picked off by the press. We were under incredible scrutiny. We got her a gal from New York and we thought, ‘Let’s get some clothes for her and the family.’ It was a failure of management not to get better control and track of that. The right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, what it was worth or where it was going. No one knew how much that stuff was worth. It was more our responsibility than hers.”

 

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