After The Election: The Sarah Palin Post-Mortem

In the days following the 2008 election, most Americans say the presidential campaign was the most exciting they experienced in their lifetime. Now that it’s over, the election certainly was entertaining - especially if you like underdogs, unpredictability and unconventional story lines.

Republicans, however, are pained to agree.

The GOP presidential campaign of 2008 will be analyzed for years to come. But not in the way that some Republicans had hoped for when they chose an experienced maverick, loved by the media, to face off against an inexperienced African-American who had trouble vanquishing his opponent in the primaries.

History is filled with examples of campaigns marked by bad decisions and poor performances that undermined their chances of victory.

But the McCain team ran a campaign that many say ranks on the bottom of this list. Pundits have called it an aimless and chaotic operation made worse by poor choices at key moments. Their first mistake was picking Gov. Sarah Palin.

Palin initially baffled the national media, as no one had heard of the former Wasilla mayor and one-term Alaska governor. When her teenage daughter’s pregnancy and Troopergate surfaced, the New York Times questioned whether she had even been properly vetted by McCain.

Palin answered her critics with a dazzling and electrifying speech at the Republican National Convention, and until mid-September, she appeared to be giving the McCain/Palin ticket a huge lift in the polls.

But quickly, her credibility quickly started to deteriorate. After terrible interviews on ABC News with Charles Gibson and CBS News with Katie Couric, the mainstream media started to portray her as a ditzy beauty queen who did not belong in the chair of the vice president. Tina Fey’s hilarious mockery of her on Saturday Night Live became a national sensation.

She appeared to regain a bit of her standing after a respectable showing against Joe Biden in their Vice Presidential debate, but Palin never fully recovered in the polls. The majority of Americans continued to view her as unqualified and unfit for the second highest post in the country.

The conservative Fox News even appears to have gone against her, releasing inside information about what is sure to prove just the beginning of the full story of Palin’s vice-presidential nomination. With news leaked from the McCain team, Fox News said when McCain’s people started prepping Palin for the national stage, they discovered that the Alaska governor couldn’t name the signatories to NAFTA (The US, Canada, and Mexico), nor did she realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country, and thought South Africa was the southern part of that country.

Even a majority of women, the constituency she was supposed to appeal to most, turned against her. On Oct. 2, 2008, Time published a popular article entitled, “Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin.”

The article stated that Obama was winning the female vote overall and that many women, particularly urban career women, thought Palin was just on the ticket for her looks and that her views on issues like abortion would make her election a step backward for women’s rights.

Talking about looks, Newsweek learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her “outrageous profligacy.”

One senior aide said that Palin had been told to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. Instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.