Shouldn't Palin just resign at this point?

Great Debates
241

I think you’re right. And a part of me cringes for her and hopes she fades back into her Yukon obscurity soon–for her sake, for her kids’ sake etc. I think we can be sure that her term as Governor will be only the one.
But another part of me is just irked at her nonsense. I would fail horribly at a debate. But I can answer a question such as “what mags do you read?” Hell, make a joke and say I’m afraid I’ll show up with the black bar across my face as a Glamour “don’t”–use some damned charm, woman! She was a beauty contestant–surely she had to field weird questions, then?

It’s like she has two modes: attack and sound byte. They need to program her better.

What is with the practicing out near the creek? There won’t be a creek in the studio… (and then I feel bad and wonder if she’s just starting to decompensate and needs to have some familiar something around her).

If I’m feeling sympathy pangs, imagine what her base is feeling. These are people who are used to being mocked for the dinosaur stuff etc–it only makes them more determined in their “faith” and more hostile to others. Expect the social conservatives to turn out in droves and be protective of one of their own.

242

Right, not to mention that the McCain campaign (and most Republican campaigns, it seems) have made a point of stressing how liberal and anti-McCain respected publications like the New York Times are. She can’t exactly turn around and gut that argument by admitting that it shapes her world-view!

243

Sure she could. “Welp, ya gotta keep yer friends close and yer damned librul enemies closer, I tell ya!”

244

Which wouldn’t be an unfair followup, IMO. If her answer is “I can’t remember yesterday’s WSJ” or even “I have’;t read the past few issues–very busy lately, ya know?” then a second followup (again, entirely appropriate) might be “What’s the best article in the WSJ you can remember?” or “Who’s your favorite writer on the WSJ?” or “What makes the WSJ connect with you?”–just something to let her show that she’s not totally faking it. An easy test for an actual WSJ reader to pass with flying colors, but a fiendishly difficult gotcha question if she’s lying her ass off.

245

She’s a college educated professional woman in her mid forties.

Why wouldn’t she check the online news sources, including the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and the major Anchorage daily first thing in the morning?

I’m not suggesting a busy manager has time to read an entire paper cover to cover, but doesn’t everyone skim the lead stories?

I’m thinking that if your state gets a big honking chunk of it’s revenue from oil and minerals, you might want to have an idea of what corporate America has on its mind. And if you want to grab some of them big ass earmarks from the Feds, you might want to glance at the Fed’s hometown paper. Just so’s you can get an idear of what’s going on down dere.

I guess the thinking is, Regular people don’t read those fancy papers, so why should I? That’s what I hire my aides to do.

But… damn, just damn.

246

I’m guessing she subscribes to the local news paper, maybe a fashion montly, maybe Field and Stream, Mooosehunters Digest? She certaintly doesn’t sucscribe to the NY Times. WaPo, SF Chronicle, Le Monde, The Guardian, THe WSJ, or even Newsweek, Time, Us News and World Report or especially the Nation. I don’t either, but then I’m not trying to run for the VP slot, and I do look at many of these on line.

247

Oh she wouldn’t like the Yukon - it’s voted Liberal (somewhat left of the Democrats) or NDP (socialist) for the past two decades. Not much scope for a political career for her there.

248

No idea how her handlers are tutoring her for the debate but it would seem to me a very obvious first step would be to have the WSJ/NYT/WaPo/FT on the kitchen table for every breakfast for a few weeks and insist she give each a very serious perusal.

For lunch toss in back copies of The Economist, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, The American Spectator and (drawing a blank on the liberal version of the Spectator).

For dinner and her evening reading by the fireplace have Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital and Barack Obama vs. John McCain - Side by Side Senate Voting Record for Easy Comparison.

249

On another board someone posted the question of whether she was giving a politican’s answer or just being obtuse. I said this…

I think the answer is: neither. I think she is seeing monsters in the closet, as it were.

See, that was a pretty simple question. It would have been pretty easy to answer at face value and not make much fuss about. But I think she has been handled and over-handled, and also shaken by the feedback from the Gibson interview, so much so that she is now…again…seeing monsters in the closet. She is poised, now, to see every question as an attack on her qualifications.

Look at what she did in that answer. She started off with some odd rhetorical tactic about the integrity of the press (no need to do that there, as the question was very benign), and she ended up with a staunch defense of Alaska’s place among American politics (no need to do that, as this wasn’t at issue here until she herself brought it up).

A shrewd politician would have said something like: “I read the same papers that everyone else reads…the Times, the Post, the Journal…we do get those in Alaska, just so you know. [Optional: I read Magazine X, Magazine Y, Magazine Z.] You asked about my worldview. I don’t let any single one of these publications shape my worldview, because I recognize that each of them approaches world events from a certain perspective. But you’re right that it is important to stay informed, and though it might surprise you, even all the way up here in Alaska I’ve been able to do that.”

That would have been very, very easy to pull off. Of course, that may not actually be the truth. In itself, that’s not necessarily a problem. She could have gone the George Bush route. But again, those monsters in the closet. What if that would be a mistake? Steve Schmidt, were are you? What should I say?

That’s how train wrecks like these happen. You don’t have genuine answers that will suffice, and you don’t have a candidate skilled enough to give the politican’s answer. So you are left with “I read 'em all.”

250

And this is where her being held incommunicado hurts her.

Most politicians at this level have been in the game for years. Obama, McCain and Biden have been grilled by the media ad nauseum for years. They have faced nice reporters and “gotcha” reporters and everything in between hundreds of times. They have learned some lessons on that count the hard way but those lessons stick and they keep going and are better prepared for the next time.

This is McCain’s fault for picking Palin. Despite running for Governor she simply has in no way been subjected to the sphincter clinching scrutiny of reporters from around the globe try to crawl up her ass with a microscope that the other candidates have and she simply is not prepared to face it. She was plucked from relative obscurity and thrust onto the national stage 8 weeks before a national election. Of COURSE the media is going to go into a frenzy looking at her in every way imaginable. Had McCain picked an old political hand (e.g. Olympia Snowe) the media would not be so nutty going after her. With Snowe they’d have ample background from her zillion interviews and Snowe would know, instinctively, how to handle interviews.

Keeping Palin away from the media simply exacerbates the problem for her and gets you your monster-in-closet mentality as well as a victim mentality.

251

Yes, constructing a convincing lie would have been tough. Telling the truth would have been much easier - unless she actually doesn’t read any of them, outside of Alaska, and so doesn’t know much.

I wonder how much international news Anchorage papers carry. I get the NY Times and the Mercury News (a formerly good paper) and the difference in coverage is amazing.

252

Or even that she’s aware of what the alternate worldview actually is?
But you’re right, the best response might be that she doesn’t want to lose her purity by being near the librul media (like the WSJ.) Be great for her base.
Does she even read National Review?

253

This bothers me in a weird way.

If you are conservative fine but it pays to still read the librul rags as well.

My dad was a very sharp guy and a diehard republican his whole life. He religiously read (had subscriptions) to both distinctly right magazines as well as distinctly left magazines. When I asked him why he read all that librul stuff he hates he told me studying the enemy’s playbook was as important as knowing your own (he was an attorney if that gives you some perspective on his mindset).

Gotta say I agree with him on that even if I never agreed with his politics.

More than that though it allows you to pilfer some good ideas from your opponents. Yeah, even the “other side” can once in awhile stumble across a good idea. To ignore that because it is “tainted” somehow is the height of stupidity.

254

She almost certainly reads American Rifleman religiously, too. This probably can not have helped her in recent weeks.

255

I took an informal poll in my office, and the consensus is the McCain camp is trying to swerve the public, and lower expectations to the extent that as the TV pundits say, as long as Palin doesn’t lose a limb or explode onstage, she’ll win. Rachel Maddow compared Palin to Eddie the Eagle, saying (paraphrasing, no cite), “Do you think she’ll do so badly she’ll be like Eddie the Eagle, and the public will sympathize with her, making her a lovable loser?”

I sure as hell hope not. Let’s take the most unlikely outcome: she debates brilliantly, and makes Biden cry uncle. Would that erase everything that came before? I mean, as has been said upthread, she couldn’t even lie and name something like the NY Times as something she read?!

If all this has been a swerve, and Palin’s just playing dumb, then IMO, she has less credibility than if she’s not playing dumb. Because then you don’t know which face she’s showing at any given moment, and the public already distrusts the government to what is likely an unprecedented (or nearly so) level (IMO, again, no cite, but that’s the way I feel).

256

George Will continues the Palin pile-on, sayingin front of the Senate Press Secretaries Association that Palin is “obviously not qualified to be President” and that her interview with Couric was a “disaster”.

I think there’s almost no chance she’ll resign, and I think she’ll do reasonably well in the debate tomorrow. But, outside of the hardcore social conservative base, who would vote for almost anyone if they opposed abortion and gay marriage, it looks like there is little enthusiasm for Palin on the right.

257

i believe i heard ms maddow mentioned the jamacian bob sled team last night. same idea… that she becomes the “keep on trucking, way behind, beloved underdog”.

with just a month and small change left, they are stuck with what they have, barring a catastrophic thingie.

258

Bin Laden must be desperately trying to pull off something in the next month. Bush has been so good for recruiting, as would McCain, and Obama would be so bad, that he must be incredibly desperate. I wonder if he’ll manage. I wonder if the Pubs will do it themselves.

259

Just from a practical standpoint, whether or not Palin has personal scrips for ANY periodicals, wouldn’t most gubernatorial offices receive a variety of pubs? And wouldn’t a governor’s staff provide clippings? She could have at least tossed in some general reference to THIS kind of thing.

Similar to my comments on the SCt cases. She didn’t really need to name/cite any specific cases, simply indicate some basic awareness of some of the issues that have been before the Court in recent years.

260

Yeah, I thought a lot about that. I would only have remembered Brown v. Board of Ed. But I would then have been saying “But I was really rather unhappy with the court’s granting so much power to the president on enemy combatants, and I wasn’t terribly happy about their overturning DC’s gun laws (I think that should be determined locally), but I thought they made the right call about the death penalty this summer. Supreme Court Justices will be the most important issue for my coming administration.” I can’t remember the names of cases but I can remember the issues.
(Not that I’m leftish or anything :D)