VP Choices: Vetting the Petsitters

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential nominee is baffling on so many levels I don't know where to start.

But it just occurred to me, I know my petsitter better than John McCain knows Sarah Palin. They met once, in February 2008, for 15 minutes. He talked to her on the phone for five minutes when he was considering her for his VP nominee. Then he had her to his house (one of them) in Sedona to talk about the job.

My petsitter came highly recommended. I checked her references, talked to people who used her, and then spent a half hour talking to her on the phone—weeks in advance. We set up an appointment for her and her partner to come to my house, where I judged her suitability to the job, and my dog thoroughly vetted her by sitting on the sofa next to her and licking her face whenever she wasn't looking. (Once I saw she was okay with that, I pulled the dog down, and made her behave.) They stayed for over an hour, and didn't seem to mind at all the many questions I asked, or the exhaustive details I shared about my dog and her habits.

But I care a lot about who I entrust my dog to. I would never leave her with someone who might forget to show up. (One of them spends the night here, mainly because I can't bear to think of the dog home alone at night.) Or someone who didn't know, for instance, that my dog likes to eat the blackberries out back, or that she hates it when male dogs try to have their way with her.

Yet John McCain seems to think it's okay to leave the country in the care of a woman he only met once, for 15 minutes, in the event he should die in office—a not entirely unlikely scenario for a 72-year-old cancer survivor.

I'm glad I'm not John McCain's dog, because if he's willling to risk the country in the hands of an unvetted VP nominee, who would he leave his dog with?

Comments

[Julie]

Yeah, but she's really pretty, and we know from McCain's past that he likes a pretty face (or was it the pretty bank account?). Okay, that was really catty.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who doesn't want her dog spending the night alone.

[A Free Man]

Originally I thought that McCain had really nailed it, really gotten it right. But the more I find out about Palin and the vetting process the more I realize that this was just a cheap political ploy that may actually hurt his chances in November.

[KathyF]

AFM, I think you are like a lot of people who assumed when they hadn't heard of her that she was just another politician they hadn't heard of who'd turn out to be okay in the end.

I bet anything--one of my houses--she'll be off the ticket by next week.