"Troopergate" & McCain

Let’s assume that the trooper is every bit the heinous beast that certain parties want to make him out to be, and that Sarah Palin’s motives are as pure as the driven snow. (Heh, apt enough.) I don’t for a moment assume either to be the case, but let’s assume them. That still leaves the fact that at the time John McCain selected her as his running mate there was a charge pending against Sarah Palin for abuse of the power of her office, and that the investigation had not yet been resolved.

John McCain was aware of that unresolved charge of abuse of the power of her office and he did not care.

Let’s go back now the “The Keating Five.” I lived in Arizona at the time. Everyone I knew was certain that McCain was as guilty as the other four and we were all astounded when he “got off.” He swore that he had “learned his lesson,” but there is plenty of evidence that the lesson he learned was to be sure that no mechanism for the investigation of Congressional breaches of ethics and abuse of power was ever allowed to become established. And to this day, none has.

McCain has pressured the FCC on behalf of campaign contributors repeatedly, and whenever the subject comes up he starts talking about his experience as a POW and the media immediately changes the subject.

So the charge of Sarah Palin’s abuse of the power of her office did not bother him in the least. To him, that is simply the normal way of doing government. It simply never crossed his mind to think that the charge might be a problem. As we say in the software industry, to him

Abuse of power is not a bug, it’s a feature.