How Sarah Palin came to be on the GOP ticket

For those of you wondering how the Governor of Alaska came to be chosen by the McCain campaign, you will find some answers in one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I have read since I've been paying attention to the 2008 election. The story was broken by the New Yorker, a quality magazine with a clear and proclaimed pro-Obama stance. 

Here's a summary of the article : 

Sarah Palin and some of her close advisors knew she had a real national potential and that her life story was compelling. Sarah Palin and her advisers hired public relation experts and advisers in Washington to make her case in Republican circles and to make herself known for what she was doing in Alaska (being a reformer, going after special interests and fighting for a natural gas pipeline etc...). As early as the beginning of 2007, a Republican blogger Adam Brinckley started a draft Sarah Palin on the ticket movement. ( The most famous instance of drafting someone for an elected position occured in the 1950s with Eisenhower.)

Last summer, she invited to the governor's mansion two distinct group of conservative journalists and influential personalities who were on cruises organized by the Weekly Standard and the National Review. She made a strong impression on all of them. That's where the momentum started, in particular with William Kristol's columns in the NYTimes calling for her to be the VP nominee. Then when McCain's choice for VP had been narrowed down to Joe Liebermann ( a Democrat turned independent who would have incensed the GOP base), Sarah Palin names came up again and after only seeing for a couple of hours, the Republican candidate announced his choice. 

I'm ashamed to admit that this did still not hit my radar at that point and I was abashedly surprised by McCain's announcement at the end of August. 

So much for the maverick, hockey mom, I-don't-know-a- thing-about-how-Washington-works posturing....

To stay on the Palin front, I've noticed that for the last week or so, many of the conservatives who have not defected to the Obama camp (Colin Powell, Chris Buckley, the son of the founder of The National Review, Scott McClelan former Bush press secretary and many more) have jumped on the Sarah bandwagon and have been defending her vocally.