John McCain Is Ruining Sarah Palin's Life

LINCOLN, Nebraska -- It's a beautiful day in the American heartland. I'm in the backseat of an American Town & Country (assembled in Canada), on the road between the Democratic convention in Denver and the Republican festival in St. Paul, looking out at the green rolling hills and ethanol fields and fat lazy cows gazing at Interstate 80. The satellite radio is all about Sarah Palin, of course.

She seems like a nice lady, this Sarah Palin, with her many children and fur coats and wintry land of moose. Sarah Palin just sort of bummed around, winning local beauty contests and hunting trophies, and then one day she decided to try being governor of her place, Alaska. "Sure," the caretaker said. "Have a go."

Life was fine. Asked about Iraq and the surge and all that, not long ago, she replied with a country grin and a shrug of the shoulders. "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq," she said last year. "I heard on the news about the new deployments ...." And now John McCain is destroying her peaceful life.

I don't want John McCain to be president, for the obvious reasons -- I don't want my two young sons to be killed by nuclear bombs. But I've got a soft spot for Mrs. Palin. I sort of discovered her, down here in the contiguous United States of America.

When she won the governorship of Alaska in 2006, I saw her picture flash on the cable news late during that night of long knives, when so many entrenched Republican politicians were swept out of office for their incredible crimes against this nation. Each week had brought disgusting new revelations of GOP sex crimes against wives, strangers, and mostly young boys. The FBI hardly had enough agents to lock up all the Republican congressmen and senators under investigation for graft and corruption.

And here was this fresh-faced new governor in Alaska, a nice honest pretty librarian-type gal with family values and an actual family -- and she was Republican! It was incredible, like finding a cute fluffy kitten in a nest of greasy rats.

So I immediately pronounced her "America's Hottest Governor" and began writing happy little articles about her quaint habits and Tina Fey looks. She ate "mooseburgers." She played basketball. Her husband was some bum with a little fishing boat. Her kids had crazy names. Her office was filled with comical dead animals.

Whenever times are bad -- and the past eight years have been horrific -- it's nice to have a Happy Subject to write about, something harmless and nice to look at. That was Sarah Palin.

Now it's over, because of John McCain's outrageous selfishness. As a cheap political stunt, McCain dragged this nice lady he doesn't even know into his doomed campaign, and already the TV commentators and op-ed writers are calling her a dimwit, an amateur, a hapless tool. McCain is such a cruel creep that he's making Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden.

For what? So this nice mother of five can cry on Election Night? So she can go back to her distant wintry land as a failure? Well, what else can we expect from America's mean old man? He's treating beauty queen Sarah Palin the same way he treated another beauty queen who briefly served his selfish interests -- his ex-wife Carol McCain, the wife he abandoned after she had a terrible car accident.

John McCain is a monster.

Ken Layne is the managing editor of Wonkette, and he's on the road to St. Paul.