Palin: Is SA a country?

Cape Town - In the aftermath of Barack Obama's historic victory in the US presidential elections, the John McCain camp has descended into bitter recriminations with reporters spilling previous off the record gossip.

The most damaging is of infighting between McCain staff and running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

One of the previously unknown stories about Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography.

According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency", in part because she didn't know which countries were in Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement), and she "didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a country just in itself".

Palin apparently asked whether South Africa wasn't part of the country as opposed to a country in the continent.

Other damaging information that has come to light was part of Newsweek's Special Election Project, which allowed reporters to gather behind-the-scenes information on the presidential campaigns with an agreement that none of their reporting would be published until after election day.

Newsweek reported that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was apparently more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy.

During the last month of the campaign Palin was dogged for days by an outcry after it was reported at the time that the Republican National Committee bought clothes and accessories worth $150 000 for her from upscale stores such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

After McCain picked Palin to be his running mate she was an instant hit with especially conservative Republican voters, but in the final weeks of the campaign most opinion polls showed that around 60% of Americans felt she was not up to the job of being vice president.

- News24