The hidden Palin agenda?

Where even to start with Sarah Palin?

Of course much has been made about McCain's incredibly un-subtle, ham-fisted attempt to woo Hillary Clinton supporters by means of picking Palin as his running mate. As VP picks go, it has been called everything from puzzling to moronic to a "hail mary play".

And you know what? I think "hail mary play" probably comes closest to reality (if we can even use that term with a straight face in light of the traditional media's seeming inability to compare politicians' statements with reality). I really believe that was McCain's primary reason.

But then the truth started coming out.

Troopergate. Bridgegate. Earmarkgate. Infidelitygate. Shotgun-weddinggate. Rape kitgate. Inexperiencegate. Wolfgate.

And that in just the first week since McCain picked her.

What on earth are we in for next week? Everybody from north, east, west and middle is realizing she's got a few screws loose even for a hard-core right winger. She scares the heck out of Matt Damon. VP-fetishism over her has driven Christopher Moore to a truly first rate piece of dialectic about why he supports Obama. The only folks who seem to like her are southern evangelicals (and not even some of them).

So it all makes me wonder if there's another agenda behind the Palin pick, and after some thought I think there is.

It all gets back to the pick being a hail mary play in the first place. Because you don't make that play if you think you have a shot at winning through ordinary means. So I think that McCain, deep in his lying little heart, believes he's not going to win in November. I think McCain already knows he's in deep, dark, electoral water and can feel the undertow pulling him away from shore.

So what does he do? He throws a hail mary pass and hopes for a miracle. But he chooses a particular hail mary pass that gives him an out if the miracle--surprise surprise--fails to materialize. And that's where Palin comes in.

Simply put, McCain picked Palin because she creates a path for him not to have to accept responsibility for his own abominably lousy campaign.

Palin's pick was weird, even by GOP standards, but it was justifiable for at least three reasons: it makes a play for Clinton voters and thus attempts to undermine Obama's base, it firms up his support among evangelicals (well, except for the ones who don't forget what the Good Book says), and it draws the media attention away from the surging Obama campaign.

But the hidden agenda is that she's so bad, so shockingly ill-qualified, so wretchedly ignorant about the basics of governance and foreign policy, that McCain now has an excuse for failing in November. Now, when he goes down to defeat like he must surely believe he will, he can blame his running mate.

She's his pick, of course, and therefore she's his responsibility, but that won't matter. He'll just lie and say he didn't know about her record, about her ignorance, about the graveyard of skeletons in her closet. Or he'll say that she hid that stuff from him. And he'll blame age-discriminating Palin-hating voters who worry that McCain will drop dead in office.

The miracle McCain was hoping for from his hail mary play hasn't--and almost certainly will not--appear. But the excuse it gives him certainly will.