He always used to say, “Never do nothing you wouldn’t want
printed on the front page of The New York Times.”

McCain staffers to tutor Sarah Billie Dawn Palin:

The McCain team has hastily assembled a team of former Bush White House aides to tutor the vice-presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, on foreign-policy issues, to write her speeches and to begin preparing her for her all-important Oct. 2 debate against Sen. Joe Biden.

Steve Biegun, who once served as the No. 3 National Security Council official under Condoleezza Rice at the White House, has been hired as chief foreign-policy adviser to the Alaska governor, campaign officials told NEWSWEEK. After taking leave from his job as vice president for international affairs at Ford Motor Co. last Friday, Biegun flew to St. Paul and, together with McCain’s foreign-policy guru Randy Schuenemann, began briefings for Palin on national-security issues—an area where her resume is conspicuously thin.

Biegun is hardly the only Bushie to be tapped for Palin duty.

Among others:

Matt Scully, a former Bush White House speechwriter who helped draft some of the major foreign-policy addresses during the president’s first term, is working on Palin’s acceptance speech to the convention Wednesday night.

Mark Wallace, a former lawyer for the Bush 2000 campaign who served in a variety of administration jobs including chief counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and deputy ambassador to the United Nations, has been put in charge of “prep” for the debate against Biden.

Wallace’s wife, Nicolle Wallace, the former White House communications director, has taken over the same job for Palin.

Tucker Eskew, another senior Bush White House communications aide, is serving as senior counselor to Palin’s operation.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former chief economist at the Council of Economic Advisers who has been serving as top economics guru for the McCain campaign, has moved over to serve as Palin’s chief domestic-policy adviser.

I find it absolutely fascinating how much that they are keeping Sarah Palin out of the spotlight; down to even canceling a visit to Phyllis Schlafly’s Republican National Coalition for Life who were holding a fund raising event in her honor. I have to confess that I thought that Todd Palin was going to be the one the McCain campaign was going to keep under wraps just in case he said something stupid (not that he won’t because, trust me, he will) but now it looks like Sarah Palin is every bit  Billie Dawn to John McCain’s Harry Brock. Part of me wants her gone because she’s Michelle Bachmann with better impulse control, but the other part of me wants to see her hang on as damaged goods.

Vetting or no vetting,  McCain’s people must have just discovered that Sarah Palin is a twenty car pile-up of duh.

They should ask for combat pay…

(Added) Just saw this.