Journalists continue to ask, “What was John McCain thinking in selecting the gaffe-prone Gov. Sarah Palin?”
In what has now become a disturbing pattern, the Alaska governor seems either unable or unwilling to avoid embarrassing statements that are often as untrue as they are outrageous. Recently, for example, in an exclusive interview with news anchor Katie Couric, Palin gushed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ” Apparently the former Alaskan beauty queen failed to realize that in 1929 there was neither widespread television nor was Franklin Roosevelt even President.
Sometimes the Idaho-native Palin seems to confuse and embarrass her own running mate. Shortly after her nomination, she introduced a “John McAmerica;” then she referred to the Republican ticket as the “Palin-McCain administration;” and finished by calling Sen. Obama, “Senator George Obama.” The Palin gaffes seem to be endless: on her way to Washington to meet the national press corps, Palin, the mother of five, once again stumbled — this time characterizing Senator Biden as “Congressman Joe Biden,” who, she chuckled, was “good looking.”
But then Palin only compounded that growing image of shallowness when introducing her own snow-mobiling husband Todd, “as drop-dead gorgeous!” And when asked about the controversial McCain ad suggesting that Barack Obama had introduced explicit sex education classes to pre-teenagers, the Christian fundamentalist Palin scoffed that it was “terrible” and that she would have never had allowed such an unfair clip to run — before retracting that apology under pressure from the now exasperated McCain campaign staff. But then, according to press reports, wild Sarah only made things worse still by announcing that paying higher taxes was the “patriotic” thing for Americans to do.
This week, the gun-owning, moose-hunting Palin also promised blue-collar Virginians that she would protect their firearm rights — even, if need be, from her own running-mate: “I guarantee you, John McCain ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey. Don’t buy that malarkey. They’re going to start peddling that to you. I got two. If he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under, you know? I’m not bad with it. So give me a break. Give me a break.”
Palin may have had some experience in Alaskan politics, but at times the former small-town mayor seems unaware of the pressures of running a national campaign in a diverse society. For example, Palin — who has had past associations with reactionary groups — caused a storm earlier when she characterized Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama in seemingly racialist terms: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Such stereotyping suggested that the Alaskan was not aware of the multiracial nature of American politics — an impression confirmed when in her earlier gubernatorial run, she had once suggested that to enter a donut shop was synonymous with meeting an Indian immigrant.
The recently-elected Governor Palin was further rattled by media scrutiny, when, in a moment of embarrassing candor, she confessed, “Mitt Romney is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly he might have been a better pick than me.” That confession followed an earlier deer-in-the-headlights moment, when the nearly hysterical Palin urged a wheel-chair bound state legislator to rise: “Sally, stand up, let the people see you!”
The Palin gaffes are no surprise to those who have followed closely her previous races. They cite her aborted governor campaign, when she was forced to pull out after fraudulently claiming that her working-class family had been Idaho coal miners — in an apparent case of plagiarism of British Prime Minister candidate Neal Kinnock’s stump speech. Palin once boasted: “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Sarah Palin’s the first in his family ever to go to University . . . is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright . . . who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Idaho and would come up after 12 hours and play volleyball?” It did not help Palin that reporters quickly discovered that while as a student at the University at Idaho she had been caught plagiarizing and also misrepresented her undergraduate transcript.
Most recently on the campaign trail, Governor Palin apparently promised a vocal supporter that the United States would certainly not burn coal to produce electricity — even though roughly half of current U.S. power production is coal-fired. The same uncertainty seems to extend to foreign policy. Under cross-examination, Palin appeared confused about her own recent trips abroad, first claiming that her helicopter had “been forced down” in Afghanistan, although other passengers suggested the landing was a routine cautionary measure to avoid a possible snowstorm. Palin likewise had alleged that she was shot at while in Baghdad’s Green Zone, although there was no evidence from her security detail that she had, in fact, come under hostile fire.
The Obama campaign has lost no time in hammering at the former hockey-mom Palin’s foreign-policy judgment, alleging that shortly after September 11 she once suggested sending $200 billion to Iran as a “good will” gesture, and reminding journalists that in repeated interviews, Palin had called for dividing Iraq into three separate nations, despite Iraqi resistance to such outside interference. Palin, the nominal head of the Alaskan National Guard, has also falsely insisted that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen had once suggested that we were losing the war in Iraq and that the Bush administration had sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to Teheran to meet with Iranian officials.
In response to Palin’s unbridled misstatements, journalists have coined the term “Palinism” — the serial voicing of sweeping declarations that are either insulting, or untrue — or both. No wonder rumors mount that Sen. McCain is now seeking a possible graceful exit for the gaffe-prone Palin, even as the Obama campaign continues to make the contrast with their own sober and circumspect Joe Biden.
— This parody is by NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
1. Every time Palin mentions one of her kids by name, take the number of drinks corresponding to that child's number in her brood (e.g. 1 drink for Track, 2 drinks for Bristol, 3 drinks for Willow, 4 drinks for Piper and 5 drinks for Trig). If she does not give a name, take 1 drink.
2. When Palin mentions 9/11 in a textually-relevant manner (e.g. "We need to prevent another attack like the one on 9/11″), take 1 drink. When Palin mentions 9/11 in a gratuitous, textually-irrelevant manner (e.g. "When my son Track was sent over to Iraq on 9/11..."), take 2 drinks.
3. If Palin uses the phrase, "hockey mom", drink until she takes the self-satisfied smirk off her face.
For Joe Biden:
1. Every time Biden chuckles condescendingly at Sarah Palin, take 1 drink. Every time Biden chuckles condescendingly at moderator Gwen Ifill, take 2 drinks.
2. Every time Biden refers to himself in the third person, take 1 drink. If he uses his full name (e.g. "When people ask me, ‘Joe Biden, how did you become so good looking?'"), take 2 drinks.
3. If Biden points out that despite being less than 1/100th the size, Delaware has more people than Alaska, drink until you see the bottom of your glass.
If either candidate says:
1. Russia, take 1 drink. U.S.S.R., take 2 drinks. Swimming the Bering Straight, take 3 drinks.
2. Hillary Clinton, take 1 drink. Bill Clinton, take 2 drinks. Monica Lewinsky, take 3 drinks.
3. Dick Cheney, take 1 drink. Tricky Dick, take 2 drinks. Sucking dick, take 3 drinks.
Finally, if at any point Biden uses the phrase "I know Geraldine Ferraro; Geraldine Ferraro is a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Geraldine Ferraro," chug your beer, turn off your TV, and shoot yourself in the head.
I've heard newsfolk saying there are tapes of Palin's gov debates. Anyone seen snippets of those anywhere?
I have. She blew away two competitors. She was sharp, assertive and knew her stuff. Of course, the caveat being that the debates were on Alaskan matters, not necessarily national nor global. How she fares when the questions are not parochial, remains to be seen.
Is this another conspiracy? Oh dear, PBS debate moderator Gwen Ifill is writing a book about blacks in politics centered on the Obama campaign.
Do you know what that means? It means that she obviously will be biased against Governor Palin. So even if Palin "loses" the debate it doesn't matter because it can't be a fair debate because of Ifill's book. You have to be a Faux News viewer to keep up to date on this stuff folks, even if Faux News gets it wrong on the details. As you might expect, Michelle Malkin has her knickers in a twist about this and how it is playing the "race card". Oh, by the way, Ifill's book project was public knowledge before the debate details were settled by both camps.
(FAIL! I thought I had figured out how to embed freckin videos in this freckin comment editor. It worked two or three times but now seems to work no more. Anyway here's the URL for the video that I wanted to accompany this comment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MENUu—lTS4
Freckin post editor...mutter mutter mumble mumble )
Location: Still in the tunnel, looking for the light. Gender:
Posted:
Oct 1, 2008 - 2:59pm
Painted_Turtle wrote:
I read an interview in an Alaska newspaper from one of the Alaskan folks she debated in the past. He said he lost his debate. He went in to it totally prepared and she beat him.
According to him this is her debating style, and it works:
When asked a question; she simply doesn't answer the question, no matter how many times it is repeated.
She just bloviates away about generallties and sounds breathy and "glittery". That's actually the style she used with Katie Couric as well
So she just never answers any questions the moderator gives her. She just talks gereraly about something, anything instead of giving them a straight answer. It'll drive Bidden nuts
I think MrsHJ may have said this before, you need Paxman on the case.
Here he is asking if the then Tory Home Secretary if he had overruled the supposedly independant head of the Prison Service after a particularly embarrassing prison break.
"Expectations are so low that if she gets through the debate without drooling on herself, she will be seen to have won."
After campaigning with McCain today, Palin will head to McCain's Arizona ranch to hunker down with Rick Davis, Steve Schmidt et al to prep for the debate. owld_skipper, when he started this thread, wrote: One of the biggest boosts that Sarah Palin has brought to the McCain campaign has been the power of surprise. In fact, I believe that whether we like it or not, Palin's nomination brought a faltering campaign back to life.
So, why is the campaign making Palin so inaccessible?
I think they are counting on Thursday night's debate to be everything the opposition claims it won't be, and they are counting on it to be a big surprise. I think there is 24/7 coaching going on to get Palin ready for Thursday. And it's not necessarily coaching to bring her up to speed on everything she obviously does not know. Palin is good on the attack, whether the basis of her attack is sound or not. The "not-on-the-issues" campaign strategy recognizes that facts don't really matter, impression and belief are what matter.
I read an interview in an Alaska newspaper from one of the Alaskan folks she debated in the past. He said he lost his debate. He went in to it totally prepared and she beat him.
According to him this is her debating style, and it works:
When asked a question; she simply doesn't answer the question, no matter how many times it is repeated.
She just bloviates away about generallties and sounds breathy and "glittery". That's actually the style she used with Katie Couric as well
So she just never answers any questions the moderator gives her. She just talks gereraly about something, anything instead of giving them a straight answer. It'll drive Bidden nuts
Isn't that why she has been sequestered ... to be told what to say, and how to react, she has no idea of her own identity anymore.. Just a thought.......