Schmidt Redux

On Monday, I wrote a long piece here about Steve Schmidt's tweetstorm on Meghan McCain and her father (in case you hadn't heard...) John McCain.  There was a long long, interesting, thoughtful article in PoliticsUSA on Monday about it all, giving the story a wider perspective, including objective thoughts about Schmidt, both positive and critical (which he subsequently said was accurate), and you can read it here.

But even more – beyond just the tweets, there is this long article Schmidt himself wrote for his online newsletter on Sunday.  Though the tweetstorm was largely directed to Meghan McCain, this is an eloquent, scathing, insightful look at John McCain -- while also expressing what he greatly admired about the man.  

This is only a small part of the piece, where he talks about the decision to interview and then select Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate.  Schmidt writes -- 

"Earlier that day, Senator McCain had asked me to accompany him to the private meeting with Sarah Palin where he would interview her to be the Vice Presidential nominee.  I said that would be inappropriate.  I told him that this was his first presidential decision.  I told him that he alone had to make an assessment as to whether she was ready to take the Oath of Office on Day 1, and whether she was prepared to be President. He, and he alone, had to make that decision.  

"This was the biggest mistake I have ever made. The first opportunity I had to discuss a substantive policy issue with her did not take place until we were leaving the Minneapolis convention.  It took less than three minutes for me to absorb the magnitude of the disaster.  Should this have happened earlier, the selection of her would never have happened. This was a lapse in John’s judgment, not mine.  My mistake was leaving John McCain alone in a room with her.

"When the campaign ended, Sarah Palin lashed out at Nicolle Wallace and me.  She and her staff smeared us as disloyal leakers, who had sabotaged her political genius.  As the stories of Sarah Palin’s grift and egregious behavior exploded into public view, I asked John McCain to call her and tell her to stop attacking us and blaming us for her failures.  He wouldn’t. Why? Because he said that if he did, she would attack him.

"The bravest man that I had ever met turned out to be terrified of the creature that he had created. His refusal to be honest about his mistake of picking her – and his unwillingness to confront the furies she unleashed – allowed an ember to grow into a conflagration that is foundational to our current catastrophic denial of reality and profound dishonesty of the far right."

Later, Schmidt writes additionally about McCain that "He was a man who believed in reconciliation. He helped re-establish relations between the United States and Vietnam. 

"He served in the United States Senate for 31 years. His story is complete now. What I have shared does not diminish the great things he did in the same way those great achievements do not, and did not, shield him from the truth. 

There's a lot more in Schmidt's article, and it's very thoughtful.  There’s very little in it about Meghan – though what’s there is brutal. 

You can find the article here.