Hendrik Hertzberg claims to know John McCain's motives in choosing Sarah Palin, which he calls "entirely tactical and mostly... cynical":
With the selection of Sarah Palin, McCain completes the job of defusing the enmity (and forgoing the honor) he earned in 2000, when he condemned Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance.” 
His motives in choosing her were entirely tactical and mostly—the mot juste is that of Mike Murphy, once McCain’s top political aide, overheard by an errant microphone—cynical. Besides placating the right, those motives included the short-term goal of preëmpting the weekend news cycles that might otherwise have been devoted to reviewing Obama’s triumphant Democratic Convention. The price that McCain paid, and that could sooner or later be exacted from the nation, was the abandonment of what he had repeatedly called his overriding requirement for a Vice-President: someone who would be ready to take his place at a moment’s notice—“you know, immediately.”
Apparently this is why the New Yorker pays him the big bucks...
Brendan -
As we have discussed before, this is not just an error that journalists make from time to time. It IS journalism in important respects.
It is one of the markers that distinguishes journalism from well written history.
Posted by: otey | September 15, 2008 at 08:56 AM