For the past few days, journalists and bloggers have been making the point that the steady stream of embarrassing revelations about Sarah Palin indicates that the McCain campaign did a half-assed job of vetting Palin. In their defense, McCain advisers have repeatedly insisted that Palin was “thoroughly vetted”, but doesn’t that just make things worse? I know it’s politically damaging that John McCain picked someone he barely knows to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, but isn’t that better than the alternative, that McCain’s campaign did all the research they could think to do and did a really crappy job of it? Or to put things another way, are we supposed to be comforted by the notion that McCain isn’t risky and lazy, but merely foolish and incompetent?