What is Palin Hiding?

Just one day before voters have to make up their minds about whether to elect her to the second-highest office in the land, Sarah Palin has still not made public her medical records, according to CNN. 

The other three major-party candidates (McCain, Obama and Biden) released medical records to the public long ago. Palin's campaign has said it would make the records available before election day. They have less than 24 hours left. Even if they make good on that promise between now and midnight, they've done a disservice to all voters by waiting so long. That's especially true when you consider that as much as one-third of the electorate has already cast ballots under early voting programs. 

Is there any good reason why Palin isn't coming clean with voters about her health? I can't think of one.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." That principle lies behind much disclosure-based regulation in this country, such as the required dissemination of financial statements by public companies. The idea is that requiring disclosure deters bad behavior, or at least prevents bad actors from keeping their misdeeds secret. 

Governor Palin's refusal to release her medical records begs one very big question: What is she hiding? And If there's nothing to hide, why not make the records public? If McCain and Palin win tomorrow, when will we find out about her health? On inauguration day? When she runs for president in 2012? Sometime after then? Never? Okay, that's seven questions, but you get the point. 

Hopefully there are no skeletons in her medical closet, but her failure to disclose her records understandably has minds running wild, especially in light of Palin's well-documented adventures in hands-laying, tongues-speaking and general religious kookery:

Is there some mental health issue we don't know about, and that the campaign would prefer we never know about?

Failing to make such a basic disclosure — every candidate for President and Vice President has done so for as long as I can remember — evidences a fundamental, and quite loathsome, disdain on Governor Palin's part for the principle that the people are sovereign in the United States of America. 

Dick Cheney would be proud.