Pulling the Curtain on Sarah Palin

As news stories in the Washington Post and elsewhere are running about the manner in which Alaska Governor Sarah Palin charged the state for the better part of a year of nights she stayed in her own home (can I get that deal?), E.J. Dionne has a great column that looks at not only Palin's unfitness for the VP slot, but also the idiocy of John McCain selecting her in the first place. First, here are highlights from the WP on the billing issue:

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ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

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The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

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The governor's daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

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Whether or not technically legal, the charges surely do not set a good example for cutting government costs and waste. If Palin's family did not want to move to Juneau - Virginia governors and their families move to Richmond - it would seem that the costs of voluntarily "commuting" and staying in one's own home should not be a cost to taxpayers even if Alaska is awash in oil money. As for Dionne's column, here are some highlights:

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John McCain's campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States. Of course, McCain's people said no such thing. But their actions told you all you needed to know.

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McCain's advisers clearly don't trust Palin to answer questions about policy and don't want her to answer many of the questions that have been raised about her tenure as governor of Alaska. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, gave the game away when he said on "Fox News Sunday" that she would not meet with reporters until they showed a willingness to treat her "with some level of respect and deference."

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Deference? That's a word used in monarchies or aristocracies. Democracies don't give "deference" to politicians. When have McCain, Obama, Biden or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton asked for deference?

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A week ago, Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times cited McCain sources questioning "how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket." She reported that Palin had been selected "with more haste than McCain advisers initially described." (She also mistakenly reported that Palin belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party. It was her husband, Todd, who had been a member.) It turned out that the McCain side misled journalists. Bumiller was right about the vetting. The lesson is that McCain's counselors are not interested in fair treatment, and they are certainly not interested in the truth.

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[W]hat matters is not Palin's personal life but whether she is prepared to assume the presidency if called upon. The actions of McCain's lieutenants suggest that they know the answer. And they are doing everything they can to keep the media from finding it.