Six months ago if you had asked me to make a list of McCain’s strengths (both real and perceived) I would have given you something like this:

1. The media loves him
2. His military background/sympathetic story
3. His foreign policy experience (Armed Services Committee)
4. His reputation for ‘straight-talk’
5. His reputation for reform (Maverick)

In a contest against Obama, I’d add:

6. His whiteness

What’s remarkable is just how badly he has squandered the first five strengths. Part of the damage was created by the process of winning the Republican nomination, which required McCain to pose as an orthodox Republican who opposes all tax cuts and doesn’t give a whit about balanced budgets, is uncompromising on opposing abortion rights in nearly all circumstances, etc.

But the bulk of the damage was done in one fell swoop when he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate without vetting her. He, and we, immediately found out that her seventeen-year old unmarried daughter was pregnant. And then he, and we, learned a lot of other unflattering things about Ms. Palin. In order to protect her, McCain made a strategic decision to use the GOP convention as one long diatribe against the elitists in the press. And POOF, the media’s love affair with John McCain ended in divorce.

Palin has no military record (despite her role as titular head of the Alaska National Guard) and she has no foreign policy experience (despite being able to see some Russian island in the Bering Sea from some remote island off Alaska). Whatever advantage McCain had in those two areas was severely undermined, if not reversed, the second people got to know Palin.

And as soon as Palin opened her mouth, she began lying. She has told a lie at every campaign stop and every television appearance (are we up to two?) she has made. McCain started telling lies to back up Palin’s lies. And POOF, there went his reputation for ‘Straight-Talk’.

But that’s not all the damage Palin has caused. McCain had a reputation as somewhat of a Maverick. He’s a guy that would pursue campaign finance reform when his party-base firmly opposed it. He’s a guy that didn’t want to drill in ANWR and admitted that global warming is a problem. He’s a guy that opposes earmarks and doesn’t ask for them. And he picked a woman that falls on the other side on all those issues. McCain once said (in 2000) that he didn’t want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Now he does. But worse, his running mate won’t even make an exception for rape or incest. She’s a creationist. She’s a favorite of the mouth-breathing fundie base of the modern GOP. She’s the biggest earmarker in the country, and she hired a lobbyist to go to Washington to ask for earmarks for Wasilla when she was the mayor there. Gone is the mavericky feel of the McCain campaign.

Now, some people might call the selection of Sarah Palin one of balance. If that’s the case, the effect is total negation. Palin effectively mutes or erases every single perceived strength that McCain enjoyed (except his whiteness). I expect Sarah Palin’s negatives to rise on a consistent basis and that she will eventually fade from view sometime in mid-October. She is an albatross.

He should have vetted her.