Well, if McCain and his campaign staff had possessed the collective common sense of a good number of us here at FR, they would never have made the mistake of allowing Palin's first interviews to be long, certain to be selectively edited, interviews by Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. That was one of the dumbest campaign mistakes made in anyone's memory of presidential campaigns.
I always remember the posts I and others made about how stupid that was, several days before either of the interviews took place. McCain definitely had one of the worst campaign teams in history, and ran one of the worst campaigns, and was one of the worst candidates ever.
Palin wanted McCain to be President more than he wanted to be President. That was certainly obvious to me.