Countdown: McCain as Palin Handler and Grandpa

More Days Till the Palin-Biden Debate





Just in case you missed it last night: Palin AND McCain with Couric. Note McCain's attempt to extract Palin's foot from her mouth. Painful to watch . . .

Countdown: She's Really a Good Girl

More days till the Palin-Biden Debate



Palin's Parents Say She's a Good Girl!

Here's a surprise: Sarah Palin's parents think she's a swell gal and they don't like the media questioning that.

That's what they told CBS news yesterday. And CBS news thought that was actually news-worthy. But isn't that what parents are supposed to say? Wouldn't Biden's mom say the same thing about the dirt the Republicans have been digging up about him, or Obama's parents, if they were still alive, about him? And would CBS news have a special report on that, as well?

Here's what Palin's parents need to understand. When a person runs for the second highest office in the land they open themselves up to an intense scrutiny that is sometimes fair, sometimes not. Too much is at stake for a candidate simply to be allowed to let their parents or their bowling buddies tell us who they are. We need to hear from everyone who knows them and examine everything they have ever done. And because this is politics and not the PTA there will be many who will be out to discredit this candidate because the party whose candidate they oppose will be doing the exact same thing to their candidate.

Information that reporters have dug up on their daughter suggest, in fact, that this is how Sarah Palin has gotten to where she is today - by dissing anyone who gets in her way. She, in other words, is just as good at digging in the dirt as anyone else. While I would rather see no one engage in this kind of politics, its much harder to feel sympathy for someone who does it themselves.

But here's what Palin's parents really need to understand. What the press is doing for the most part is helping us understand whether or not their daughter is qualified for the second most important political position in the most powerful country in the world. This has nothing to do with how nice she is. This has to do with her qualifications for national office. We are willing to believe that she is a good mother and a hard worker. We understand that she is extremely talented and a natural leader. All of these things that her parents wish us to understand about her, we do understand. What we don't understand is why Senator McCain thought she was qualifed for this position.

In the few times she's been allowed to respond to questions with her own thoughts she has evidenced a pitiable lack of knowledge about the very things a vice president needs to know. I don't care how quick a read she is, there is simply no way that she can get up to speed within two or three months. This is not an SAT exam. This is holding responsibility for the administration of the world's most powerful country. No major corporation would even begin to consider someone with insufficient experience or knowledge to be a vice president in their company. Why should we consider putting in office someone with as thin a resume as their daughter?

Mr. and Mrs. Palin: we think you have a fine daughter. She is charming and charismatic and has gone far with grit and determination. She is a gifted leader on the local and state level. She has a wonderful family; a model for working mothers everywhere. But she is not qualified to be vice president of the United States. That more than anything else is what the investigative reporting you are so critical of has determined. She is not suitable for this position. I hope you understand that this is not personal. It's the truth.

Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin . . . Again!

More days till the Palin-Biden Debate




Check this out. Tina Fey nails Sarah Palin yet again. Hillarious!

From NBC's Saturday Night Live (9/27/08):

Palinisms: Another from the Couric Interview

Here's one I missed first time around.

This woman is a veritable treasure chest of the kind of incomprehensibility we thought only George Bush could pull off.

Read it and weep or laugh. Both responses are appropriate.

* * *

Palin Trying to Explain Obama's Surge in the Polls: (I dare you to try and figure out exactly what she's saying without having your brain explode)

From the CBS News Katie Couric Interview:

I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?

Palanisms: One More

Here's another to add to the list:

Comparing the Russian leader, Putin, to a horse (from the Katie Couric interview):

It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where - where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border.

Palinisms: The First Collection

From the Katie Curic Interview on CBS News:



On consulting crystal balls and tea leaves:

The way that I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.

(OK, I was a bit naughty here. This is not what she meant . . . . . But the rest of this is verbatim.)

Say what?:

1. And I asked President Karzai, "Is that what you are seeking, also? That strategy that has worked in Iraq that John McCain had pushed for, more troops? A counterinsurgency strategy?" And he said, "yes."

2. That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada.

3. It — it’s funny that a comment like that was — kind of made to — cari — I don’t know, you know? Reporters —”

The kind of answer you never want to give on a diplomatic civil service exam:

Diplomacy is about doing a lot of background work first and shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps could be implemented if things weren't gonna go right. That's part of diplomacy.

From the script of a bad John Wayne movie:

It is obvious to me who the good guys are in this one and who the bad guys are. The bad guys are the ones who say Israel is a stinking corpse and should be wiped off the face of the earth. That's not a good guy who is saying that.

Sarah Palin with Katie Couric

All that coaching and she still isn't ready for prime time. Certainly not for prime time in the White House.

The Sarah Palin Show: "Doublespeak"

A couple of things from tonight's interview on ABC evening news. Not sure I'm going to get to watch the longer interview on 20/20. My wife, who is part of the demographic that is supposed to go ga-ga over Sarah Palin - middle aged white evangelical (as am I) - has said that she's tired of seeing Palin's face on our TV. She finds her hard to stomach, particularly after watching her snarky performance at the Republican National Convention. Hard to see anything even dimly reflective of her professed Christian convictions there.



Here are a couple of observations (see next blog for the most astonishing statement of the night):

1. Governor Palin was far more relaxed tonight and didn't give the sense that she was repeating memorized policy statements. She was way out of her league last night. Tonight she was in familiar territory, speaking about issues she's had to deal with on the local and state level. I think we were actually hearing her own thoughts and words. First time since since the convention.

2. Any talk about Governor Palin being a "different kind of politician" needs to be set aside. This is a slippery politician who has learned how to deflect difficult questions with a kind of verbal sleight of hand. And she's a master at it, as the following exchange with Gibson on "the Bridge to Nowhere" shows:

(from abc.com)

Sarah Palin on 'Bridge to Nowhere':

GIBSON: You have said continually, since he chose you as his vice presidential nominee, that I said to Congress, thanks but no thanks. If we're going to build that bridge, we'll build it ourselves.

PALIN: Right.

GIBSON: But it's now pretty clearly documented. You supported that bridge before you opposed it. You were wearing a T-shirt in the 2006 campaign, showed your support for the bridge to nowhere.

PALIN: I was wearing a T-shirt with the Zip code of the community that was asking for that bridge. Not all the people in that community even were asking for a $400 million or $300 million bridge.

GIBSON: But you turned against it after Congress had basically pulled the plug on it; after it became apparent that the state was going to have to pay for it, not the Congress; and after it became a national embarrassment to the state of Alaska. So do you want to revise and extend your remarks.

PALIN: It has always been an embarrassment that abuse of the ear form -- earmark process has been accepted in Congress. And that's what John McCain has fought. And that's what I joined him in fighting. It's been an embarrassment, not just Alaska's projects. But McCain gives example after example after example. I mean, every state has their embarrassment.

GIBSON: But you were for it before you were against it. You were solidly for it for quite some period of time...

PALIN: I was ...

GIBSON: ... until Congress pulled the plug.

PALIN: I was for infrastructure being built in the state. And it's not inappropriate for a mayor or for a governor to request and to work with their Congress and their congressmen, their congresswomen, to plug into the federal budget along with every other state a share of the federal budget for infrastructure.

GIBSON: Right.

PALIN: What I supported was the link between a community and its airport. And we have found that link now.

GIBSON: But you didn't say no to Congress, well build it ourselves until after they pulled the plug. Correct?

PALIN: No, because Congress still allowed those dollars to come into Alaska. They did.

GIBSON: Well, but ...

---------

Gibson finally gave up and went on to other matters which she also skillfully deflected with teflon-like ease. Which means that an aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh is most appropriate here.

Clearly any thought McCain had that he was getting a "straight-talking" partner is pretty much blown out of the water by these interviews. There's a reason Palin got as far as she did in Alaska politics. She's learned how to play the same kind of political games they all play.

"Doublespeak (sometimes double talk) is language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of bald euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity."

from Wikipedia

The Sarah Palin Interview Part 3: Global Gobbledegook

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who wasn't sure exactly what Governor Palin was saying about global warming. Is it man made or not? That was Gibson's question. Pretty straight forward. But the governor did a song and dance around this one, particularly when she was confronted with the fact that she had denied that it was man made.

My take on Palin's take on this was that she was trying hard to soften her earlier approach to the issue by claiming nuance where such nuance didn't exist. "I didn't say it wasn't man made," she claimed, "when did I say that?" And then she launched into the kind of double-speak we've come to expect from our pols. In other words, more of the same. "What I said ," she said to paraphrase liberally. "was that perhaps it might be true ( or not )under certain circumstances, given the right climatic and atmospheric conditions, to say that global warming, at least what some might call global warming, might be considered man made without actually making the claim that it is completely man made because natural conditions also come into play here. Or not."

Huh??

Final observation: while much has been made about Governor Palin being a formidable force who will easily hold her own in a debate with Joe Biden, I'm not so sure. I don't think she's all that good thinking on her feet. Here's why.

When Gibson began to push the governor outside the boundaries of her learned script she looked a bit dumbfounded, the kind of dumbfounded that makes you embarrassed for someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but is pretending that they do. OK, not everyone knows what the Bush doctrine is. No big deal there. But the deer in the headlights flicker of panic on her face when she realized she didn't have a clue what Gibson was talking about followed by her attempt to cover up her ignorance with the kind of answer students give when teachers hit them with an unexpected test question ("During the Dark Ages it was mostly dark.") was embarrassing.

Biden will have to tred lightly or risk the "truth squad" going after him for sexism. But in a fair debate on issues which will call for some kind of substantive responses I can't see her coming off very well at all. I think in the end she may end up being the embarrassment we all assumed she would be when we heard that McCain had picked her.

The Sarah Palin Interview Part 2: Militaristic Mama

Just made it through the Nightline interview which wasn't all that different from the Readers Digest version they put on the national news at 5:30. Mostly it filled in the cracks, so the ineptly edited earlier version made more sense. For the most part my initial assessment stands. This is a well coached debate student parroting answers to anticipated questions.

This time, however, it did appear that we were hearing some of Palin's own thoughts on issues related to terrorism and the war in Iraq. Given the fact that she just sent her son off to war this was to be expected.

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything to indicate that she had thought very deeply about these issues, nor that she understood the complexity of what's been happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kind of like our current commander in chief. In fact, it sounded a whole lot like what we've been hearing for the past six years. The world is pretty much divided between good guys and bad guys. We're the good guys. Good people like us need to send troops wherever we need to go to take out the bad guys because they're out to get us. Don't like our way of life. And it's all about winning and losing, kind of like a high school hockey game only a tad bit bloodier.

Reports about the speech she gave this afternoon at the send off for her son say she made the link that even Bush has stopped making between Iraq and 9/11. She told Gibson that she hates war, but this plus most everything else she said in response to Gibson's commendably pointed questions about foreign policy suggest, despite her attempts to add nuance to her responses, that this is a person who would have no qualms starting wars for what she would consider righteous causes. The bad guys better look out if this pistol packin', moose shooting, pit bull of a hockey mom (with lipstick) is sitting in the White House. There'll be no place to hide. But then, when the nuclear missles start flying we won't have any place to hide either.

This is scary stuff, especially when you put it alongside the militaristic impulses of her running mate ("bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."). And don't forget his shoot from the hip decision making (can anyone spell P-A-L-I-N?).

Next: Palin on global warming

The Sarah Palin Interview Part 1: Polly Wanna Cracker?

OK, we've heard the first 10 minutes of the ABC interview and she didn't do too badly. No major gaffes (like her one off script comment about Fannie and Freddie earlier this week). Nothing too radically ridiculous. And, boy, have they worked with her to get the pronunciations right. That Ahmadenijad slid right off her tongue as though she had actually said it once or twice before.

But, of course, she knew these questions were coming. She may, in fact, have had them ahead of time. That was the buzz earlier - ABC sent her the questions. But even if they didn't her handlers pretty much knew what Charlie Gibson was going to ask. No real curve balls here (except perhaps the one about the Bush doctrine. She seemed to be a bit clueless about that. Thought Gibson meant Bush's "world view," a Christian buzz word with which I am well familiar, but not what Gibson had in mind). And clearly she was well coached in what to say about the hot button issues buzzing around blogs, like her views on Israel and the God statement she made in her church about Iraq. Pretty clever of her handlers to put that bit about Abraham Lincoln into her mouth. I mean, who's going to question someone who's merely quoting one of the greatest presidents ever! Kind of a conversation stopper, don't you think?

But here's the point. We still don't have much of a clue what Governor Palin actually thinks or believes, or whether she knows enough to do the job of helping to run the government of the most powerful nation in the world. All we have so far is a well coached debate student parroting what her handlers have taught her to say. I'll reserve final judgment until I've had a chance to listen to the longer interviews later tonight and tomorrow. But right now I remain unimpressed. Not only unimpressed, but deeply concerned that all we're going to get between now and November 2nd is this kind of paint by numbers sort of response to every question put to her. So I repeat what I said in an earlier blog:

"Trained monkeys can do this."