Only four days ago, the nation's voters were asked to accept John McCain's assurances that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, known to only a tiny portion of the public and barely to McCain himself, was fully suited to be vice president.

But now the magnitude of McCain's gamble is becoming clear.

For every piece of the portrait of Palin that the McCain campaign sketches, a far more complicated picture is drawn.

The youthful mother of five whose placement on the ticket was meant to reinforce traditional values has revealed that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant, information that the family and the campaign said they had hoped to keep private.

The woman introduced to America as a reform-minded Washington outsider who opposed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" — the symbol of McCain's hatred of wasteful spending — originally supported its construction. The governor, who in her introductory speech decried the practice of budgetary "earmarks," sought, as the state's chief executive and as mayor of Wasilla, hundreds of millions of dollars in such federal funding for local projects.

Moreover, Palin has retained a lawyer to represent her in a controversy the McCain campaign said it had fully researched -- Palin's role in dismissing a state police official who had refused to fire a trooper who divorced Palin's sister.

On Monday, the McCain campaign dispatched lawyers to Alaska in a move described as an attempt to manage a growing crowd of journalists who have traveled there to inspect Palin's background. But the move raises the impression that the McCain campaign didn't know everything about his No. 2 and is now racing to learn what it can while trying to avoid tough questions about the Arizona senator's decision-making process.

... contd.