Sep 4, 2008 11:33 pm US/Central
Good Question: What Is Vetting?
(WCCO)
All week people have been criticizing the vetting process used by Sen. John McCain in selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. But what is vetting?
According to dictionary.com, to "vet" is to subject to careful examination. We use it as a verb, but it comes from the noun "veterinarian."
Prior to a major horse race, animals would go to the vet to be checked out. In the late 1800s, people started referring to that as a "vetting."
The first documented non-horse-racing use of the word is from a 1904 Rudyard Kipling book, "Traffics and Treasures." The line used referred to a military guard: "They've been vetted, an' we're putting 'em through their paces."
According to
Slate.com, "William Safire first tackled vetting for his "On Language" column in 1980. In response to a reader's complaint that Newsweek used the word twice in two weeks,
Safire noted that "some dictionaries have it" and that "the Britishism is in vogue use in America today." He dedicated a
second column to vetting in 1993, which is right around when the New York Times started using the expression with great frequency -- in reference to Bill Clinton appointees, among other topics."
The Democrats and Republicans both had teams of people vetting possible vice presidential candidates. Minnesota's Gov. Tim Pawlenty has said that he provided documents and information to the McCain campaign, as he was being vetted.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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