I watched some of the interviews Brian Williams at NBC conducted this past week with John McCain and Sarah Palin together. One thing I found amusing was how often Palin felt the need to add her own two cents to some of the answers McCain gave, as if she was trying to amplify (or even clarify) what he was saying. Or saying it the way she thought he should have said it. Or trying to score some points with the public, even if at McCain’s expense. And the longer I watched, the more convinced I was that McCain’s weak smile whenever she spoke was becoming more and more forced. It’s the kind of smile he probably perfected in Hanoi to keep himself from getting whacked in the head with another rifle butt.

I sense some cross-generational tension between Mister Hero and Miss Alaska. Perhaps caused by Sarah Palin’s habit of going “off message” on the campaign trail a lot in recent weeks. Well, not really going “off message” as much as going “counter message”. When the campaign makes a move she doesn’t agree with, she says so publicly. Like she did when the campaign pulled out of Michigan to focus on other states where they might actually have a chance to win. Or when she pulled away from her horrified minders at the airport to actually go talk, unsupervised, to the press. Or when she criticized the campaign’s use of anti-Obama recorded robocalls, calling them “irritating”. That’s right, Sarah thinks they’re irritating- which is a little like Barney Frank calling something “gay”.

To be fair, Veep candidates do these things sometimes. Recall Joe Biden’s criticism of the Obama campaign ad that painted McCain as old and “out of touch”. Or his comment that the federal bailout of AIG Insurance was a mistake - a position directly counter to Obama’s stated position. But all that happened with 6 or 7 weeks left to the campaign, when there was still time to fix any damage. Publicly, Obama scolded his running mate rather gently about those errors. Privately, he probably read Biden the riot act. And as a result, it hasn’t really happened since.

But Palin seems to spend more time going with her own message these days. There are noises coming from the McCain camp that Sarah’s “gone rogue”. Sometimes she acts as if she’s the one at the top of the ticket. And it looks like it’s starting to frost McCain a little. After all, she didn’t have to run a long and expensive Primary campaign. She was hand picked out of relative obscurity for one reason only - to attract voters and help him get elected, not for her name recognition, or her large and devoted constituency, and certainly not for her overpowering political expertise.

Maybe Sarah’s just unable to temper the tactics she uses as Governor - like firing people who won’t submit to pressure, or soaking the treasury for every expense dollar she can, or rationalizing a justification for every action she takes. Or maybe she’s just become convinced that she’s on a sinking ship. Because lately, she seems to be trying to distance herself from a potential McCain loss while at the same time positioning herself as the Republican Party’s brightest hope for 2012. Which should be scaring the crap out of the Republican Party.