McCain: Palin's Vetting Was "Completely Thorough"

By Holly Bailey

John McCain and his aides are strongly pushing back against the idea that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not properly vetted before being named to the No. 2 slot on the GOP ticket. Speaking to reporters this morning outside a Philadelphia fire house, McCain was asked if he believed his vetting of Palin was “thorough enough.” “The vetting process was completely thorough,” McCain said. “I’m grateful for its results.”

Privately, aides insisted that none of the revelations that have emerged about Palin since Friday when she was named to the ticket—including the pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol—came as a surprise to “anyone” involved in the vetting process, including McCain. An aide, who declined to be named because the vetting process was private, says Palin was “completely upfront about anything” that could potentially come back to hurt her candidacy, including her daughter’s pregnancy, which this aide says she told the campaign about “early in the process.” It’s unclear exactly when McCain learned or when the campaign would have put out that news. Aides said the Palin’s announcement yesterday was precipitated only by “nasty rumors” spreading throughout the blogosphere that the governor had not been truthful about her own pregnancy earlier this year. Over the weekend, liberal bloggers suggested that Palin had not given birth to Trig, her 4-month-old son, and rather, Bristol was his mother, and that the family had covered it up—rumors a campaign aide denounced as “disgusting and untrue.” Palin, who arrived in Minnesota on Sunday night but has largely stayed out of sight, was said by an aide to be angry and upset about the rumors. “Do I have to show them my stretch marks?” she asked McCain advisers. “It might come to that,” one joked.

Within the past few days, the McCain campaign dispatched a troop of GOP lawyers and investigators to Alaska to pull records on Palin. The move has been interpreted in recent days as a sign at the McCain campaign did not vet Palin as much as aides have publicly suggested. But a senior McCain aide, again refusing to be named because the process was private, insists the campaign is merely following up on what already had been an extensive dig into her background and that aides would have pulled the records earlier had they not been fearful of drawing attention to themselves. Aides pointed to word that leaked out in the Alaska media last May that A. B. Culvahouse, the former Reagan aide leading McCain’s VP screening, had traveled to the state to meet with Palin. The campaign quickly concluded that if news of a private meeting had leaked out that investigators pulling records related to her days as a mayor and city council member, as well as archives of Alaskan newspapers, TV and radio were sure to draw attention. An aide described the process on-going currently in the state as merely “follow-up.”