On another point. Palin would not have been chosen if Hillary (or Selibus) was on the ticket. She was cynically chosen to “exploit” an all male Democratic ticket.

I don’t think the Obama campaign needed any time to prepare their counter-strategy. They must have known these “issues” could be brought up at any time; after all, they were a prominent part of the primary process. I’d be willing to bet that they were prepared all along to respond to these accusations again if they came up in the general election. Indeed, they would have been fools not to anticipate it, and if it’s one thing we know about the Obama campaign, it’s that it’s not run by fools.

I’d guess that Obama’s responses have been in the hopper for months, ready to go if the time came.

The problem is, by explicitly attacking her, Obama would be legitimizing her. Right now, the vast majority of the American people don’t take her seriously. Attacks delivered from her mouth are almost instantaneously delegitimized, and John McCain knows this. Their hope is, because the press is following everything she says so closely just waiting for the next “Katie Couric Moment”, they’ll report her attacks, and that’ll start a dialog within the media where they don’t treat the attacks on merit, but just ask over and over what effect they might have on the Obama campaign. They’re trying to turn Sarah Palin into a one man Swiftboat operation.

Any overt attacks by Obama on Palin while in this media dynamic will just cause journalists to breathlessly declare, “OMG, it’s working. Sarah Palin is taking Obama out of his game!!1!”

So they’re better off ignoring the source of the attacks, and focus on the attack itself, and what this means coming from John McCain. You question does he condone these attacks. If not, is he even still in charge of his own campaign? If he does condone him, so much for the honorable person who once claimed to want to run a clean campaign. Forget Palin, she’s just a front that McCain is choosing to hide behind. She’s got her own problems that are coming for her, and she knows it. This is all about John McCain regardless of how much he might wish it were otherwise.

Personally, I would like to decapitate Palin, but more temperate political judgment is to leave her alone, prowling the landscape and baying at the moon. Her behavior is revolting, but gender has become third rail, and unfortunately there are people out there who believe that a woman is entitled to ‘take off the gloves’ but can’t be attacked in response.