Palin was the leading candidate by the beginning of last week. Davis had spoken with her a number of times. The McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her, including videotapes of her public speeches and interviews. "She makes a great speech," one adviser observed.
Last Sunday night, McCain talked to Palin by phone from Arizona in what aides described as a somewhat-lengthy call that resulted in McCain asking her to come to Arizona.
On Wednesday Palin flew to Flagstaff. That night she conferred with Schmidt and Salter. The next morning around 7, the three of them, along with a Palin aide, climbed into an SUV with tinted windows to begin the 45-minute drive to McCain's retreat in Sedona.
She then talked to McCain for a while, and then Cindy, and was offered the job.
What didn't they do in their vetting process? Huffington Post reports:
Bq.. the McCain campaign had not gone through old newspaper articles from the Valley Frontiersman, Palin's hometown newspaper.
How does [the Huffpo researcher] know? The paper's (massive) archives are not online. And when he went to research past content, he was told he was the first to inquire.
"No one else had requested access before," said the source. "It's unbelievable. We were the only people to do that, which means the McCain camp didn't."
The paper wouldn't confirm or deny the McCain camp had requested access, but it seems likely they didn't.
officials with the paper did not recall inquiries by the McCain campaign. "I cannot confirm that information at this time," said publisher Kari Sleight. "I am not aware of the McCain campaign researching our archives, but archive requests do not usually go through me."
HuffPo says clip searches are politics 101.
A rudimentary clip search, such as this, is presidential politics 101 as campaigns not only look for the majority of background information on any high-level appointee, but also try to prepare themselves from future attacks.
Another thing McCain didn't do: Contact the fired public safety manager who claimed he was fired for retaliation for not firing Palin's trooper brother-in-law. (Lots new details on that story here.)
It's possible that although the articles were not online, they were available through Lexis.com. I've found a lot of them going back to the 90's that way. There's no way to know if they are complete, however. And according to HuffPo,
....there have been hundreds of stories on Palin by the Frontiersman dating back over 15 years, only a handful of which are posted online.
Nor, does it appear, the McCain camp went to Alaska to interview people:
In addition, the former Republican House Speaker of Alaska, Gail Phillips, admitted to reporters that she was shocked by McCain's choice of Palin, as "his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out."
What we do know is how John McCain says he makes his choices. The New York Times reports:
At the very least, the process reflects Mr. McCain’s history of making fast, instinctive and sometimes risky decisions. “I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can,” Mr. McCain wrote, with his top adviser Mark Salter, in his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For.” “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”
