I wasn't aware of this tidbit from Ben Smith's juicy Palin v. McCain piece:
"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.
"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.
It's not hard to imagine why the aide with the closest ties to CBS would take the rap for mismanaging Palin.
For what it's worth, I agree with those who say there was no way not to mismanage Palin. The flaw was in the conception (i.e., the veep pick), not the execution.
--Noam Scheiber