Analysis: How Well Was Palin Vetted?

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Well, John McCain's surprise choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate has raised questions about how thoroughly his campaign examined her background. NPR News analyst Juan Williams is in St. Paul and joins us now to talk about that. Good morning, Juan.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Renee.

MONTAGNE: How many potential running mates were screened by the McCain campaign before it made its choice?

WILLIAMS: Well, according to the campaign, Renee, you had five or six who were the finalists. That would include Joe Lieberman, Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge, Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin. But they started with about 30 people, and in the case of Sarah Palin, when it came down to it, Senator McCain had met her in February, then he had one phone call to her last week in which he invited her to Arizona, where he offered her the job.

But A.B. Culverhouse(ph), a longtime Republican lawyer, and 25 people had apparently gone over her public sources, her financial and tax records, even looked into an ethics case about the firing of someone who was her public safety commissioner in relationship to pressure to try to get her brother-in-law out because he was in some sort of spat with her sister. And Renee, Sarah Palin answered a survey that included 70 questions and went through a three-hour interview with Culvahouse, so they say this vetting process was thorough.

MONTAGNE: What do you make of a New York Times report, though, that a vetting team only arrived Alaska last Thursday; it was the day before John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate and suggests that she was a very last-minute choice.

WILLIAMS: Well, the McCain team is pretty adamant in saying, Renee, that that's a second group of people who came to manage what's going on in Alaska, that they are there somehow to coordinate the media, as the media tries to get new sources of information all over Alaska about Sarah Palin. They want all those requests to be funneled through the campaign, and they want to correct any misconceptions.

At the moment, this is part of a larger effort to coordinate Sarah Palin's image for the American people. She's locked down right now here in St. Paul. She arrived here Sunday, but even yesterday she canceled an appearance at the National Coalition for Life. She had a brief meeting with Mrs. Bush and Mrs. McCain; I think Joe Lieberman went by. But what you see is that Matt Scully, who worked on speeches for President Bush for several years, is now in charge of writing the speech that Sarah Palin will deliver Wednesday night to the convention. And Tucker Eskew, another longtime Republican operative, is in charge of managing her, managing her image and her schedule.

MONTAGNE: Well, but in terms of how much John McCain knew about her before choosing her, when did he learn about Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter being pregnant? Was that before or after he made his choice?

WILLIAMS: Well, the McCain people say that he knew about it all along, Renee. The only regret they have there, they say, is that they released the information in response to rumors about Sarah Palin and the birth of her fifth child, the child with Down syndrome, and by releasing it in response to that made it part of a sort of national conversation. They'd hoped to do it in a different way at their own time. They say that Sarah Palin will not get into this in the speech that's to be delivered here at the convention. She'll talk about her story, her personal narrative, and her history as a reformer.

MONTAGNE: Right, and on that one, Juan, just very briefly, she presented herself as a reformer, as you know and we all have heard, but the story's a bit more complicated.

WILLIAMS: Oh, it is because, I mean, even when she was mayor of Wasilla, she was hiring lobbyists who were close to Senator Ted Stevens, now under investigation, indictment, and getting millions of dollars for this small city. And then on the Bridge to Nowhere, the party wants to represent her as a longtime opponent; in fact, she had been a proponent initially. So these are all things that damage the image of her as the maverick and reformer, and that's what they're really concerned about. They want to hold on to that most of all, Renee.

MONTAGNE: Juan, thanks very much.

WILLIAMS: You're welcome.

MONTAGNE: NPR News analyst Juan Williams speaking to us from St. Paul, Minnesota. And you can read analysis, profiles, blogs and transcripts of key speeches from the convention at our website, npr.org.

You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.

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