When I survey the stories coming out about the internal rifts within the McCain campaign following the convention involving Sarah Palin - it’s extremely disheartening to see, because it indicates to me a serious lack of professional discipline from the team John McCain surrounded himself with. Ultimate responsibility for this, and he’ll probably actually eventually admit this, if my reading of the man’s character is correct, lies with John McCain himself - because it is the leader that shapes the tone of a group dynamic, by the people he hires, and how he oversees and guides them. This doesn’t absolve the staffers involved, as a fair secondary share falls upon those staffers who broke discipline, and betrayed their loyalty to the campaign over petty, internal frictions that are inherent in any high pressure, small group dynamic - which in this case all added up to a series of what were basically unforced, self-inflicted errors that cost them the election, and allowed a completely Democratic majority to give the same old policies that have resulted in spectacular failures for over 125 years one more try, in the middle of a recession, during a war.

Thanks, assholes.

I have to differ with Senator McCain’s hoped for description of this as ‘losing with honor’. Flushing away the opportunity available through the 3d of November over petty jealousies and authority issues, from a complete lack of the ability to function as a dedicated, professional team, that completely lost sight of and deliberately distracted from the objective, is hardly something that can even charitably be called ‘honorable’.

I thought McCain’s choice of Palin was absolutely brilliant, and said so at the time - and I still do think it was a brilliant pick, that was horrendously and ultimately fatally mishandled at almost every step of the way afterwards. Starting with a total disregard of the biggest reason for picking her in the first place; who she was, and what she’d managed to accomplish on her own merits - by misguidedly, awkwardly, and buffoonishly trying to desperately “re-package” her for “wider national consumption”. If she needed such a major overhaul, then what the hell did the people of Wasilla, the people of the State of Alaska, people like me, and candidate John McCain see in her in the first place? I’ll tell ya -we saw grit, determination, and a proven ability to get the job of shaking up the status quo done - which, if properly amplified, would have been absolutely more than essential for a winning effort. Instead, McCain’s boneheaded staffers imagined they had to “prepare” her, or “fix her up”, not trusting her own natural abilities as a politician to do what she’s proven she knows how to do - campaign for elected office! Think of how the “clothes scandal” would have played out as a huge plus if the media had been invited along on a “Sarah Shopping Spree” at a Wal-Mart, or a JC Penney’s, or a Target, while the candidate picked up a few “items for the campaign trail”, then actually wore them to events - yeah, the blue-bloods may have clucked, but the members of the NASCAR Nation on the fence would have fallen in love on the spot. Because something like that would have screamed, louder than any words, or any campaign publication or web-video authenticity. But by handling her the way they did, sequestering her out of sight while publicly announcing it was to “bring her up to speed” on “complex” issues, these f*cking morons actually created the whole “she’s a dummy” meme out of whole cloth, with a vile dose of “creation of a stepford politician” undertone vibe on the side, garnished with enough sub-rosa, purely sexist “she’s just a stupid girl” dripping condescension and patronization to aggravate just about anyone’s subconscious.

And now the big A-ha post facto rationalization seems to be anecdotal evidence that when Palin realized what a royal screw job she was being treated to, she got upset about it behind closed doors? Or to intimate that she was unfit because she was running a few minutes behind schedule one morning on the campaign trail, but let you yahoos into the room anyway so you wouldn’t fall even further behind?

Please.

All of these behind the scenes bozos need to do everyone a favor and make some serious career moves - into something other than “helping” with politics. Because basically, you suck at it, and this is still a nation offering almost unlimited opportunities for your own personal pursuit of happiness. So go pursue it doing something else, that doesn’t have such a negative impact on everyone else. If you didn’t have even less than the plain common sense to go with what worked, with what McCain saw that made him pick her, and what I myself saw from my own independent research of her as a politician, and just let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin, then in my opinion you’re about as bright, and about as useful as a dirt clod. No, you don’t even achieve the exalted status of dumb as a rock or thick as a brick. Because you can use either of those two things to at least prop a door open, which is basically all you pinheads really had to do - whereas a dirt clod isn’t really useful for anything. Except making mud. Which is the only clear cut success from the campaign you guys put together.

Back last fall, I became a Fred-head, because on the issues, nobody else, on either side, could hold a candle to Fred when talking the specifics of the issues. I was then extremely disappointed to see Fred render himself unsuitable for the job (in my opinion), based on the horrendous way he mis-managed what seemed to be a very promising effort. My support for McCain grew out of that disappointment, with the rationalization being that even if I didn’t see eye to eye with McCain on every single issue, he was pointing in the right direction, he at least he apparently knew how to run a campaign, and by extrapolation, would probably do a fair job running the executive branch, in an honorable fashion. And as the proof is in the pudding, I readily admit that my hopes in that department were wrong.