Close Call

The senior members of McCain’s campaign team have undergone a painful odyssey of their own. In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through.

Despite the passion and furor of the 2008 presidential campaign, I actually have some respect for Senator John McCain. The same cannot be said of Sarah Palin, and as this new article in Vanity Fair shows, America avoided one hell of a close-call by rejecting her last November. Should the unthinkable happen to McCain in the next eight years, the only thought in the minds of millions of Americans will be that they came painfully close to having to witness the inauguration of Sarah Palin.