Sarah Palin Was as Bad as We Thought

November 06, 2008 05:23 PM ET | Bonnie Erbe | Permanent Link | Print

With the election a distant memory and the McCain and Palin teams publicly discussing their internal battles, we learn the following...

From Newsweek's Special Election Project comes the real Sarah Palin. She met staff members in a towel:

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

Then Fox News's Carl Cameron repeats venomous off-the-record remarks made by frustrated staff, on condition they not be revealed until after the election:

The transcript goes as follows:

Fox's Smith: Now that the election is over, Carl, tell us more about all those reports of infighting between Palin and McCain staffers.

Fox's Cameron: Well I wish I could have told you more at the time but all of it was put off the record until after the election. There was great concern in the McCain campaign that Sarah Palin lacked the degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, and a heartbeat away from the presidency. We are told by folks that she didn't know what countries that were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement—that being the Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. We're told that she didn't understand that Africa was a continent rather than a ... country just in itself. A whole host of questions that caused serious problems about her knowledgeability. She got very angry at staff, thought that she was mishandled, was particularly angry about the way the Katie Couric interview went. She didn't accept preparation for that interview when the aides say that that was part of the problem. And that there were times that she was hard to control emotionally. There's talk of temper tantrums at bad news clippings ...

I've written before and been skewered for same when I questioned Governor Palin's intelligence. Turns out I was more than right to do so.

I am no fan of Sarah Palin, but it seems petty for McCain staffers, who put her before McCain as a great running mate, should now be mocking her. Leave her alone and let her crawl back into the iceberg from whence she escaped. Paying her any more attention only increases her hunger for public attention.