Earlier that day, Senator McCain had asked me to accompany him to the private meeting with Sarah Palin where he would interview her to be the Vice Presidential nominee. I said that would be inappropriate. I told him that this was his first presidential decision. I told him that he alone had to make an assessment as to whether she was ready to take the Oath of Office on Day 1, and whether she was prepared to be President. He, and he alone, had to make that decision.

This was the biggest mistake I have ever made. The first opportunity I had to discuss a substantive policy issue with her did not take place until we were leaving the Minneapolis convention. It took less than three minutes for me to absorb the magnitude of the disaster. Should this have happened earlier, the selection of her would never have happened. This was a lapse in John’s judgment, not mine. My mistake was leaving John McCain alone in a room with her.

When the campaign ended, Sarah Palin lashed out at Nicolle Wallace and me. She and her staff smeared us as disloyal leakers, who had sabotaged her political genius. As the stories of Sarah Palin’s grift and egregious behavior exploded into public view, I asked John McCain to call her and tell her to stop attacking us and blaming us for her failures. He wouldn’t. Why? Because he said that if he did, she would attack him.

The bravest man that I had ever met turned out to be terrified of the creature that he had created.