Republican political operative Nicolle Wallace served in the Bush White House and as a top aide to the John McCain 2008 presidential campaign. She’s now promoting a new novel, It’s Classified, which is about — in the words of a new Time magazine profile — “what would happen if a woman were plucked from relative obscurity and elected Vice President of the United States, only to find herself completely unprepared for the job.”  As it turns out, Wallace’s fictional vice president is not just completely unprepared but seriously mentally ill.  And guess who that fictional vice president is based on?

“The idea of a mentally ill vice president who suffers in complete isolation was obviously sparked by the behaviors I witnessed by Sarah Palin,” Wallace tells Time.  “What if somebody who was ill-equipped for the office were to ascend to the presidency or vice presidency? What would they do? How long would it take for people to figure it out? I became consumed by this question.”