Vanity Fair is running an article today that contains quotes from several (unnamed of course) former staffers from John McCain’s presidential bid. In it, these staffers bemoan how Sarah Palin turned out to be an even worse VP candidate than they imagined.
I’ve never been a fan of the Alaska Governor. There’s certainly plenty of criticism to go around for her performance on the campaign trail. That said, we’ve been down this road plenty of times already. Quite a few articles came out in the months following the election ripping Palin’s performance. That some Republicans still feel it is their place at this later date to trash her is beyond me. What good comes from it? These anonymous “friends of the campaign” do no good for their careers or their party by raining on one of its most prominent officials. Sure, they get the thrill of seeing their name in the paper, but ultimately it only feeds into the liberal narrative of a GOP at war with itself.
It also makes these staffers look incredibly petty. Yes, at the end of the day the candidate is the one who wins or loses, but Sarah Palin is not the dominant reason McCain is still in the Senate. Perhaps it makes these staffers feel better about themselves and their own failures to trash Palin, but it also exposes them as petty people who can’t deal with their own shortcomings, learn from their mistakes and move on.
If they must continue to speak about their disapointment in Palin, I suppose it’s good for them that they remain anonymous. No one in the political world would ever want to hire them again.
These people might be anonymous for the record, but I bet they are well known to various GOP circles.