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News today is dominated by the financial bailout talks in Washington and John McCain's hamfisted attempt to hijack them for political gain in the run up to his debate tonight with Barack Obama. Nonetheless, negative commentary abounds also on Sarah Palin's interview Wednesday and Thursday with Katie Couric of CBS. Excerpts from Palin's interview with Couric that didn't go so well for her include the following:
*Palin's inability to recall even a single example of McCain's "maverick reform efforts" from his 26 years in the US Senate: "I'll try to find ya some and I'll bring them to ya."
*A repeat of her claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia should be counted as foreign affairs experience, combined with the highly provocative suggestion that Russia represents a direct military threat to the United States: "...As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where, where do they go? It's Alaska...." (In fact, the shortest route from Moscow to anywhere in the continental US is over the Atlantic, and in any case Putin would have nothing to gain by directly threatening or provoking the US).
*A call for an impossible "surge" in Afghanistan: Defense officials including Secretary Gates have made it clear that as long as current troop levels remain in Iraq no such "surge" is possible for Afghanistan.
*Following her meeting with Henry Kissinger in New York, an insistence that direct, unconditional talks with Iran would be "naive" in obvious ignorance of the fact that Kissinger himself has advocated such talks.
*Evasion on McCain campaign manager Rick Davis' relationship with Freddie Mac, mouthing the same McCain talking points on Davis that have already been discredited.
*A suggestion that Barack Obama turns as political winds blow, licking her finger and dismissively sticking it in the air, that was simply tacky (and I mean trailer-park tacky).
Palin's performance with Couric is being panned by conservative as well as liberal commentators, who appear to agree that this was worse than her previous interview with Charlie Gibson: unprepared, incoherent, and utterly lacking in specifics. Palin should "bow out" of the race, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker argues at the National Review: "Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there." Conservative blogger Rod Dreher writes of Palin: "She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero." Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that "Sarah Palin is a bad joke." Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times writes that Palin's remarks seem "like an outboard motor loosened from the stern." Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News and World Report describes her statements as a "talking points machine gone out of control."
Meanwhile, John McCain's role in the bailout flap is being seen by many as disruptive and even damaging. Democrats have pounced on McCain for charging into Washington as he did, assuming the role of savior while doing little to save anything but his own flagging campaign. Many in the press, likewise, hold McCain responsible for stalling a deal on the bailout that was well on its way to being done: ABC News suggests the "Pottery Barn Rule" applies to McCain on his role in the stalled bailout deal: "You broke it, you own it." E.J. Dionne writes in The New Republic that "McCain's boisterous intervention - and particularly his grandstanding on the debate - was less a presidential act than the tactical ploy of a man worried that his chances of becoming president might be slipping away."
Like his selection of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential running mate, McCain's actions in the bailout talks appear to be just one more silly political stunt that, ultimately, may cost far more more than it benefits him.
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
