Gov. Palin went from Sarah Who to conservative rock star in less than a week. In less than two months, she could be elected to serve under the oldest president ever elected to a first term. Intense, independent scrutiny by The Times and the rest of the news media of Palin’s background, character and record was inevitable and right.

Normally, in a democracy, the way you reform a party is by tossing it out of power until it learns its lesson and gets its act together. But the McCain-Palin plan is to reform Republicanism by keeping Republicans in control of the White House and most of the powerful posts in the federal government. That’ll show them.