Obama’s strategy should be to yield all his time to Palin and just lean back and snicker as she destroys herself.
I recently read Game Change, a “behind-the-scenes” look at the 2008 election by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. If their interviews with McCain/Palin staffers (and possibly the candidates themselves) are to be believed, then Palin is actually stupider than she lets on.
Let that sink in for a minute.
I’m not sure about a “strategy,” per se, but I would certainly want a moderator who would actually make her answer the questions asked. Not like in the debate between her (“can I call you Joe?”) and Biden where, when she got a question that wasn’t part of her script, she would just go on and start babbling about something she had been rehearsed on.
I think Gwen Ifill was so nervous about showing some sort of bias, she went too far in the other direction by not insisting Palin answer the questions asked. :mad:
Hold the phone … my point was not so much who her speeches appealed to, but rather does she really sound that stupid on purpose. Did someone sit down and write:
… and she delivered it verbatim?
I think not. I just don’t think she’s smart enough to pull off thinking on her feet. And it doesn’t sound like she really has a grasp of the issues either. Not with speech like that.
Every politician and public speaker gets tongue tied or loses their train of thought, especially when they have been coached to say a certain general thing in response to a certain question and then blanks out. Obama himself has gotten tongue tied in public speeches, and I trust you don’t think that means he’s stupid.
Bush was pretty much the master of blundering speech and miscues, and he still managed to get himself elected and re-elected.
I’m not saying that Palin is the sharpest tool in the shed…she isn’t. But you don’t have to be ‘smart’ to become president. You don’t have to know what you are doing either. You simply have to get more people to vote for you than for the other guy.
Many people aren’t. Bush wasn’t. I don’t think Obama is particularly good at ad libbing his speeches either. Clinton was a master of this, as was Reagan. Bush’s daddy wasn’t particularly good at speaking even when he WAS on script. Hillary used to be pretty bad at it, but had gotten MUCH better during her bid for the top slot.
MMV. I agree with you (I also agree that she isn’t the brightest bulb), but the thing is, if she actually does manage to the the Republican nomination then some non-zero percentage of the population will disagree with your assessment of her grasp of the issues.
-XT
That would be nice. Of course, it would have to be applied to Obama as well, in which case it would be terribly unfair and nasty and biased and bigoted and all the rest of it.
Come to think of it, having a moderator apply that kind of double standard to an Obama-Palin debate might help her campaign. I realize the SDMB and other extremist factions would never either admit it or see it, but having a moderator attack one side and favor the other in a debate the way the press does with Obama might not redound to the benefit of BHO et al., especially against a candidate aiming for an appeal to moderates.
It will never happen, obviously, since Palin will not receive the nomination, but if it did, then fantasizing from both sides ought to be acceptable. So I would hope Obama tries the sort of sneering condescension that extreme liberals would like him to do whenever he addresses someone outside the One Truth Faith of Obama The Perfect and Most Glorious. Obama relies on a sort of professorial, “trust me I’m smarter than you” persona. Turning into an attack dog would likely backfire, in the eyes of the middle at least. Not least because he has no practice at it, and also that he doesn’t want to come across as a scary black guy.
Won’t happen, like I say.
Regards,
Shodan
I doubt a mean moderator would do much for her campaign. Her bread and butter last time around was complaining about that mean ol’ “gotcha media”. She’s not going to pull in any voters by reading from the same script again, especially since she was crying wolf about it last time.
I agree that Obama won’t play well as an attack dog, though. Not because I think he’s worried about being the “scary black guy” - after four years of his presidency, people, I think, get that he’s pretty mild mannered - but because it just isn’t him.
Oh, maybe a bottle of good whiskey or something. If Palin gets 10% or more in the final tally of the New Hampshire primary, I send a bottle of something nice. If she gets less than 10% (including if she doesn’t run), I win.
Does NH have open primaries?
I remember, at the time, a lot of people, including many who wanted Obama to win, cautioning against taking Palin too lightly, against attacking her as a lightweight, et cetera, lest one turn off the Real Americans who just wanted to have a beer with her.
Things did not turn out that way. She actually WAS a drag on the ticket, and it was mainly because she looked like an idiot.
I think he should embrace his “eliteness” really. Everyone on the right thinks he is an elitist, nobody on the left would ever hold it against him to the degree that they would vote for Palin under any circumstances.
The message should be “Yes, I am an elitist. I am an educated, intelligent person. I am knowledgeable. And as a leader of the most powerful nation in the world, you have to be. Folksy charm might get you elected as mayor of a small town, but we’re talking about running the free world here. Do you want someone you’d like to have over for a BBQ for president, or do you want someone competent”.
But if the GOP picks Palin I would assume it is in order to tactically lose 2012 but build up for a win in 2016. Picking Palin would get all the Teabaggers back voting for the Repubs, then they can pick a less extremist and more competent candidate for 2016. When they’re not running against an incumbent president who’s a brilliant speaker and ran the best campaign the US has ever seen when he first got elected.
That will also give them time to develop one. 
Not completely. If you’re registered as a member of a party, you can only vote in that primary. If you’re undeclared, you can pick either.
But people don’t like Palin and they don’t think she’s capable of being president. The media loves her and she’s been great at keeping herself in the news, but after 2 years people like her less and still think she’s unqualified. Looking like an idiot in all the debates would only help her with the minority of people who like her.
Intelligence is really over rated. She’s made a lot of money and is the de facto leader of her party so she deserves some credit there, but I think she’s clearly actually not able to communicate without stumbling over her words, largely because she doesn’t have the complex ideas and relies on sound bites. There are millions of people of all political persuasions who have no idea what they’re talking about but still have strong opinions and Palin is just better at it than they are.
On the other hand, try watching Fox and Friends sometime, if you can stomach it. Those people act way stupider than they really are and as far as I can tell it’s because they want to seem accessible to their audience. It’s not like Beck or Hannity, who I find repugnant. The Fox and Friends guys have really honed in on appearing stupid without respect to politics and they’re obviously quite a bit smarter than they let on.
McCain’s staff was appalled at how difficult it was to try and get her ready for the debate. They felt she was unteachable . She can spout folksy slogans but has very little understanding of what is going on. They were exasperated.
There are enough Americans who accept that as profound understanding. They feel she is like them and identifies with their problems. I wonder how many of them would have quit a governorship to chase money? Yet they accept her doing that.
She uses her slogans quite well to feed the tea baggers who eat it up. But, president?? Give me a break. Can you image her representing the US in international conferences? Can you picture her in a debate with a another country’s leader? She would shine at A G8 meeting, wouldn’t she? She is a joke only it isn’t funny? Has she ever given a nuanced speech about an important issue? Does she show a deep understanding of any issue whatsoever?
She’s dumb for a politician the same way she’s sexy for a politician.
Compared to the average voter, she is above average for intelligence. Compared other people we regard as sexy, she’s below average.
But she’s being compared to successful politicians, which makes her look hot but dumb.
Palin’s overall strategy is to spout buzzword-laden gibberish until she has an opening to make it personal, and then pile on the butthurt. If she can turn anything into an attack on her family, she will.
So I say Obama beats her by getting out in front of it. He starts early on with effusive praise for Palin’s family, and phrases everything in terms of how it will affect them–soldiers like Track, young mothers like Bristol, special needs children like Trigg, fishermen like Todd, etc. Absolutely nothing negative about any of them, and talking about his own family, too, so it becomes about the shared experience of being a parent.
I think about the way John Edwards shut down Dick Cheney by phrasing his support for gay rights in terms of Cheney’s daughter, and Cheney couldn’t respond. Granted, it’s an issue that Cheney broke with Republicans on, but even if he hadn’t, he was smart to shut up, because he couldn’t say anything without sounding like a huge asshole.
I don’t think Palin is that smart. I don’t think she can defend against it, and I think there’s a good chance she’d try to throw it back at Obama and she’d end up saying something arguably offensive about his family. Then he could turn her own thing back on her.
I don’t think there’s anything he can do to compete with her non-substantive answers. If he acts even a tiny bit disrespectful of what she says it gives her an opening for the whining, not so much during the debate as after. But it’s hard to take her seriously. It’s like an experienced swordsman fencing against a six-year-old with a club.
I don’t think her relative lack of intelligence and ignorance of issues will be her biggest vulnerability. Those are serious problems for a president but many voters are willing to overlook them.
I think Palin’s big problem will be her inability to handle adversity. Voters may be willing to accept a president who’s ignorant but they don’t want somebody who’s weak.
Palin has made too many complaints about how the media picks on her. She gets sympathy for that but it’ll cost her votes. If she gets nominated the Democratic strategy will be “If Palin couldn’t stand up to Katie Couric how can she handle Vladimir Putin?”
Not “I am an elitist”: instead, “I am elite” He should decidedly hold to the position that he’s a smart guy who cares about and works for the benefit of all.
All except the rich, anyway. But they don’t need the help, and nobody likes them anyway.
As much as I’d love to hear him- or any other President, for that matter- say this, I’m afraid that it would give the opposition way too much ammo. All we’d hear from the Republicans from that point on would be: