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Why she wasn't vetted better by McCain and the Republican Party speaks pantloads as to the question of "What the hell were the Republicans thinking in that election?"
This is fairly easy to answer if you ignore everything that happened after her nomination and put yourself in John McCain's shoes in the summer of 2008.
The Democrats had just nominated the first major party black candidate for president but in doing so had dismissed someone who would have been the first major party female candidate for president.
Republicans recognized they had a problem connecting with women voters. The economy hadn't gone wheels off yet but wasn't anything he could run on. Ditto for foreign policy. The calculus was that a historical nomination by the other party required a counter that could potentially draw in a critical cohort that hadn't been a strong point for his party.
It's too easy in hindsight to say a wanna be beauty queen probably wasn't the best choice for that strategy. But it bought him some conservative buy in that wouldn't have been there if he picked Joe Lieberman.
McCain probably faced a no win situation. He rolled the dice with a long shot strategy that made sense at the time.
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