During her gubernatorial campaign, Bitney said, he began predicting to Palin that she would make the short list of Republican Vice-Presidential prospects. “She had the biography, I told her, to be a contender,” he recalled. At first, Palin only laughed. But within a few months of being sworn in she and others in her circle noticed that a blogger named Adam Brickley had started a movement to draft her as Vice-President...
[Adam] Brickley registered a Web site—palinforvp.blogspot.com—which began getting attention in the conservative blogosphere. In the month before Palin was picked by McCain, Brickley said, his Web site was receiving about three thousand hits a day. Support for Palin had spread from one right-of-center Internet site to the next. First, the popular conservative blogger InstaPundit mentioned Brickley’s campaign. Then a site called the American Scene said that Palin was “very appealing”; another, Stop the A.C.L.U., described her as “a great choice.” The traditional conservative media soon got in on the act: The American Spectator embraced Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, praised her as “a babe.”
Traditionally, Halloween is the time for stories in which many women lament the fact that the holiday pushes them to dress in a more risqué manner.
This year, however, I think Sarah Palin has done feminists a favor -- based on my anecdotal evidence from attending a few Halloween parties, she's the fave costume. Although Palin's sex appeal cannot be denied by some, Palin's wardrobe, whatever its controversies, is certainly more demure than most Halloween choices for women.
This story by Tom Giratikanon in the Naples Daily News suggests some of the key accessories:
Those dressing up as Palin are certainly finding unlikely partners, such as wolves, Eskimos and babies, managers said. But the key to any good Palin, it seems, is her trademark glasses.
“They’ve been pretty popular,” said Billy Ray of The Fun Tree, a costume shop in Fort Myers.
Because there are no Palin masks yet, her glasses have become perhaps the most distinctive political Halloween accessory since a 1998-vintage cigar.
“This is as big as Monica Lewinsky,” said Masquerade owner Barbara Baier. The Lewinsky scandal was a time when her store always kept a sailor hat, a wig and yes, a cigar, on the front counter, such was the demand.
Robert Draper will be blogging during the last week of the campaign for GQ. This post contains some more behind-the-scenes on prepping Sarah Palin for her VP debate:
I’m sympathetic to [Tucker] Eskew and [Nicolle] Wallace, and not just because they’re decent people. They’ve held their tongue from leaking what a couple of McCain higher-ups have told me—namely, that Palin simply knew nothing about national and international issues. Which meant, as one such adviser said to me: “Letting Sarah be Sarah may not be such a good thing.” It’s a grim binary choice, but apparently it came down to whether to make Palin look like a scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus (emphasis added).
Of course, this speaks just as badly of McCain as it does of Palin. He's the one who wedged himself into a Palinesque dilemma.
UPDATE: Given all the speculation about Palin in 2012, it should be noted that just because she was uninformed in September 2008 does not mean she'll stay that way. I'll be interested to see what course she charts over the next few years.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Conor Friedersdorf is immune to irrational arguments about Palin:
In case you haven’t been paying attention, an enormous turnout at an Obama rally means that he is a celebrity cult leader who talks pretty to his mindless supporters but lacks substance, whereas smaller crowds turning out to see Palin prove that she is the best decision John McCain has ever made, and that she is obviously qualified to be vice-president.
I think Jane Mayer's New Yorker essay on Sarah Palin was intended to be the shiv that finally does her in, but it had the reverse effect on me -- and I'm no fan of the current Sarah Palin. Compared to Noam Scheiber's TNR essay, which showed Palin as someone hostile to elites and elite-y things like policy expertise, Mayer's essay actually made me like Palin much more.
Mayer reveals that Palin courted DC concervatives by hiring DC lobbyists and talking to Weekly Standard and National Review types when they came on Alaska cruises. So, in other words -- gasp! -- Palin was ambitious and good at power-schmoozing.
Meh. Ambitious politicians are not exactly unusual, and Palin's ambition has never been a concern. Her utter conviction that she already knows enough to become the leader of the free world, however, scares the living bejeezus out of me.
Mayer's article is a damning indictment, but not of Sarah Palin. It's the DC conservative cocktail circuit and John McCain who come off worse for wear. Fred Barnes, William Kristol, Jay Nordlinger and Dick Morris come off as besotted teenagers suffering from Rich Lowry's Syndrome. They're the ones who believed her to be ready to lead, and are now blaming McCain's handlers and a hostile media for her crash and burn on the national stage.*
McCain, meanwhile, comes off as a follower and not a leader in his own campaign:
By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.
“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”
With just days to go before the Convention, the choices were slim. Karl Rove favored McCain’s former rival Mitt Romney, but enough animus lingered from the primaries that McCain rejected the pairing. “I told Romney not to wait by the phone, because ‘he doesn’t like you,’ ” Keene, who favored the choice, said. “With John McCain, all politics is personal.” Other possible choices—such as former Representative Rob Portman, of Ohio, or Governor Tim Pawlenty, of Minnesota—seemed too conventional. They did not transmit McCain’s core message that he was a “maverick.” Finally, McCain’s top aides, including Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis, converged on Palin. Ed Rogers, the chairman of B.G.R., a well-connected, largely Republican lobbying firm, said, “Her criteria kept popping out. She was a governor—that’s good. The shorter the Washington résumé the better. A female is better still. And then there was her story.” He admitted, “There was concern that she was a novice.” In addition to Schmidt and Davis, Charles R. Black, Jr., the lobbyist and political operative who is McCain’s chief campaign adviser, reportedly favored Palin. Keene said, “I’m told that Charlie Black told McCain, ‘If you pick anyone else, you’re going to lose. But if you pick Palin you may win.’ ” (Black did not return calls for comment.) Meanwhile, McCain’s longtime friend said, “Kristol was out there shaking the pom-poms.”
I actually think Black's assessment was correct, but surely someone as obsessed with honor as John McCain might have cared just a little bit about post-election governing, no?
*One meme that I've seen forming in the past month is that Palin has done fine except for the Katie Couric interview, and that was only because Couric asked follow-up questions. With all due respect, that's a load of bull. Her interviews with Gibson and Hannity were almost as bad as her Couric interactions. Her debate performance wore thin after the first 15 minutes. She's committed a variety of smaller gaffes at her campaign rallies. Between her convention speech and her Saturday Night Live appearance, almost every Palin action that a camera has recorded has not treated her favorably. She's been listed as a key reason for a string of conservativeeditorial boardendorsements of Obama. This cannot be chalked up to a few miscues. Palin's campaign performance has been an abject disaster.
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen.... Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.
Now, strip away Lowry's hyperbole prose and, er, straightening, and Lowry is basically saying that Palin connects with the camera better than most politicians. This is clearly true. As David Kusnet pointed out in TNR, a transcript of Palin's debate performance would reveal lots of gibberish, but:
[P]eople don't parse debate transcripts, they watch the show on their TV screens. Palin looked and sounded friendly, funny, and confident--not at all like other uninformed and less-than-coherent candidates, such as Dan Quayle, who sounded hesitant and seemed flustered during his debates with Lloyd Bentsen and Al Gore. So the early verdicts are that Palin exceeded expectations and held Biden to a narrow victory or even a draw.
Those who predicted Palin's humiliation forgot that she had been a TV sportscaster and knows how to make the camera her friend. But the lesson isn’t just the benefits of media training--it’s the importance of emotional intelligence. For all her unfamiliarity with many issues--and the unpopularity of her positions--Palin’s performance made sense emotionally, with one glaring exception. Indeed, McCain--and even Barack Obama--could learn some lessons from Palin about how to bond with most Americans.
So cut Lowry some slack, and let him enjoy his starbursts.
11:00 PM: Off to bed. For those of you who missed the debate, Will Wilkinson's recap is shorter and funnier than the actual debate.
10:46 PM: Ah, I can switch to CNN... and just heard an uncommitted Ohio voter say that she thought there was more "straight talk" in this debate. This is odd, because I thought both McCain and Obama were better at direct answers than Palin or Biden.
10:44 PM: The Official Blog Wife is forcing me to watch the post-game on PBS. A professor there also says she thought that Palin's answers were way too folksy. Hmmm... two academics think she was too colloquial... McCain advisors somewhere are jumping with glee.
10:31 PM: That's it! My take: Palin did much better than expected, but the folksiness was layered on a bit thick for me. Biden did better than her on foreign policy, but he also launched into some stem-winders when shorter, crisper replies would have been better.
10:29 PM: Palin's closing statement: "I've always been proud to be an American. And so has John McCain." Subtle implication: Biden and Obama are the real Manchurian Candidates.
10:27 PM: Oh, wow, Biden just gave a shout-out to Mike Mansfield. That's old school! And it's actually a good anecdote about Jesse Helms.
10:18 PM: I'm going to be very curious how this debate plays with people who only catch bits and pieces of the debate. I think the Sarah Palin of this debate will play well in short sound bites; Joe Biden is barely tolerable. Over ninety minutes, Palin's repeated tics start to grate more than Joe Biden's -- which is really saying something.
10:13 PM: Did Sarah Palin just say that she wished the Constitution gave the Vice-Presidency more power?
10:11 PM: ENOUGH WITH THE MOTHER-F$%$ING SMALL TOWN, MAIN STREET, SCRANTON/WASILLA FOLK WISDOM BULLS%$T!!
God, that felt good.
10:10 PM: I'm beginning to suspect that at 3:00 AM every day this week, someone woke up Sarah Palin and yelled "greed and corruption on Wall Street" at her.
10:04 PM: Hey, Sarah Palin wants to attach political conditionality to Alaska's sovereign wealth fund! This live-blogging has actually been useful for my research!
10:03 PM:David Pinto is live-blogging the Cubs-Dodgers game. I so got the short end of the stick.
10:01 PM: Biden's contempt is starting to leak through.... his sigh is almost as good as Al Gore's. To be fair, I'm finding Palin to be a bit wearying after an hour of listening to her verbal tics.
9:59 PM: Before I vote for Barack Obama, he must promise that he will never allow Joe Biden to repeat anything on camera ever again.
9:51 PM: Was it just me, or did Biden have a mini-stroke when he said "Spain?"
9:47 PM: Biden gives an answer on Pakistan that's pretty good, until he ends with (paraphrasing), "there are 1,000 madrasahs on the border in Pakistan! We should be building schools instead." Hey, Joe? That's what a madrasah is.
I think he just pulled a Palin!
9:43 PM: Palin to Biden: "Your plan on Iraq is a white flag of surrender." Wow. That's pretty strong language. Since no one cares about Iraq anymore, it won't matter, though.
9:38 PM: Laura McKenna: "I really, really want to trim Palin's bangs."
9:31 PM: On the climate change question, a little of the Katie Couric-style Palin pops in for a visit. Oh, and just to repeat -- energy independence is a really nice thing to talk about, but until those dilithium crystals are discovered, it's never gonna happen.
9:29 PM: James Poulos is right: "it’s so far super-easy to tune [Biden] out.
9:27 PM: I know this is nitipicking, but neither of them has directly answered a question.
9:26 PM: Biden is driving me to drink. By the fourth question, Palin has finally nailed her Tina Fey impression cold.
9:23 PM: Blinking Light 1, Biden 0!!
9:21 PM:God bless Megan McArdle: "Sarah Palin winks at the camera. I didn't believe it the first time I saw it; thank god for TiVo. I think all three million viewers are supposed to come up to her hotel room with a bottle of champagne after the debate."
9:17 PM: Palin makes a great point about small businesses! Really! I'm not being sarcastic here (Biden has a fair rebuttal)!
9:15 PM: Palin's spoken message, "I might not answer the questions in the way you like, but I'm going to speak right to the American people!" Unspoken message: "Darn it, I've learned how to duck a direct question! Yay!!"
9:13 PM: I second Alex Massie -- "I too want extra credit for watching this."
9:12 PM: Everyone drink at the first mention of a Joey!!
9:10 PM: Hey, Suzie Ormon has possessed Sarah Palin's body!!
9:09 PM: Both of them gave decent non-answers to the first question.
9:01 PM: Watching this on CNN HD -- uncommitted Ohio voters are decidedly neutral towards Gwen Ifill.
9:00 PM: It begins... hey, wait, where's the Olympic torch ceremony?8:54 PM: Should Soledad O'Brien really be telling the dialers that negative attacks don't play well with dialers? Isn't that corrupting the sample?
8:50 PM: In a dramatic policy reversal, the hard-working staff here at danieldrezner.com announced that they will start watchig the debate with coffee ice cream, and then switch to alcohol. This was not an easy decision to make, but after seeing the effect of our prior policy on equity and credit markets, it was necessary to make adjustments.
7:24 PM: Politico's Mike Allen reports that Palin is going to go on the offensive against Biden. This would make the debate more entertaining.
Comment away on the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. I'll be live-blogging this one, but bear in mind:
I'll probably update this post a little less frequently -- i.e., after every five-minute "segment" of the debate.
Here's a topic of discussion before tonight's debate -- the following ad released by McCain's campaign. It's targeted against Biden, and called "Embarrass":
The ad works in making Biden seem buffoonish. Here's the thing, though -- is it possible to defend this ad while simultaneously defending Sarah Palin? Wouldn't the people who like Palin's "folksiness" like some of the gaffes in this ad?
Seriously, I put this to the Palinphiles.
Back when the debate starts....
Here's Katie Couric with both VP candidates about their thoughts on the Supreme Court:
This is a hell of a choice. On the one hand there's an unstoppable gasbag who makes every question all about him. And on the other hand there's an idiot with no understanding of constitutional law beyond the 3X5 index card placed in front of her. Neither of them have met a sentence that they can't extend for another two minutes with their run-on syntax.
The debate tomorrow night might be the most painful two hours of television I have watched since Temptation Island.
UPDATE: Ross Douthat makes an excellent point:
there's a sense in which the apologists for her performance are getting something right: In the process of performing very, very badly on national television, Palin is holding up a mirror to the rest of the political world, and revealing how the mix of talking points, bluster, obfuscation and BS that nearly all national politicians traffic in as a matter of course sounds when it's filtered through someone who isn't practiced in it, and isn't ready for the spotlight. Her performances reflect badly on her readiness for the vice presidency, no question - but they reflect badly on our whole compromised, spin-happy political class as well.
A month ago, Sally and Chuck Heath's third child, Sarah Palin, a self-proclaimed hockey mom and wildly popular governor of Alaska, was thrust into the national spotlight when John McCain picked her to be his running mate.
In the time since, Palin's readiness to be president in the event she and McCain are elected and McCain becomes incapacitated has been widely questioned by Democrats and many in the media.
But, in an exclusive interview at their home in Wasilla, Alaska, the Heaths told Early Showco-anchor Harry Smith their daughter is, indeed, ready to occupy the Oval Office at a moment's notice.
When asked by Smith about rumblings that Palin isn't ready to be vice president and a heartbeat away from the presidency, Chuck replied, "She's ready to do anything she wants to be. And she perseveres, she works so hard, she learns so fast. Yeah, she -- I -- I don't worry about that at all. That's what I'll tell 'em. Yeah. ... You want some honesty, yeah -- yeah, not a typical politician, get her. Yeah. Yeah."
Sally added, "She's got that ability to relate to people. She's diplomatic. She can get her point across."
I'm starting to wonder if the McCain campaign's strategy for Palin is to make her campaign so embarrassing, so Office-level awkward, that she starts to collect pity votes.
On the other hand, I congratulate Palin for earning the whole-hearted support of her parents. If McCain had been stupid enough to pick me as his VP pick, here's how the story would have read:
A month ago, the Drezner's first child, Daniel Drezner, a self-proclaimed "blogger father" and tepidly popular professor at Tufts University, was thrust into the national spotlight when John McCain picked him to be his running mate.
In the time since, Drezner's readiness to be president do anything remotely managerial in the event he and McCain are elected and McCain becomes incapacitated has been widely questioned by Democrats and many in the media everyone with an IQ over 80.
But, in an exclusive interview at their home in Connecticut, the Drezners told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith their son is, indeed, ready to occupy the Oval Office at a moment's notice -- at least, once he cleans up the bedroom he occupied as a child.
When asked by Smith about rumblings that Drezner isn't ready to be vice president and a heartbeat away from the presidency, Daniel's father replied, "Yeah, I don't blame them. Have you seen this room? Come over here, take a look. If he can't organize his closet, how is he going to manage the federal budget?"
Daniel's mom added, "It's my fault -- I didn't ask him to do enough cleaning up as a child. Also, his posture is so poor -- he stoops over way too much. Could you tell him that for me the next time you see him? He's not calling us all that much right now.
"Would you like to see his bar mitzvah album? Are you hungry, Harry? Some nice brisket, perhaps?"
Um.... here's the latest Palin interview snippet:
[But what about Joe Biden? He recently f#$%ed up in interview situations as well!!--ed.] Duly noted and linked. The difference to me might be one of expectations. I already knew that Biden is a blowhard and ready at a moment's notice to say something silly. But I also know that, in the past, Biden has been willing to own up to his own stupidities. I also know that, prtisanship aside, Biden actually has an interest in foreign affairs, governing, that sort of stuff.
All I know about Sarah Palin is the following:
She's a hockey mom
She has less than two years of experience as governor
She has yet to utter a coherent sentence on foreign policy
Am I missing anything?
UPDATE: OK, I've finally found a situation where I feel the need to defend Sarah Palin!
Chris Orr links to this Thinkprogress video, observing, "Note the frequent glances at what appear to be notes in her lap.":
Actually, what I noticed is that Couric glanced down at her notes more frequently than Palin!
As Palin videos go, this one is less damning than most.
Clearly, I don't get the political allure of Sarah Palin. So I'm going to ask her defenders -- what positive leadership or political attributes did she display in this interview?
Clearly, I need the expertise of the Palinphiles, because I've come to the conclusion that Campbell Brown is dead wrong.
I know that transcripts of spoken remarks can sometimes look foolish in print/on the screen. I'm pretty sure that the problems currently plaguing Wall Street are complex and defy easy answers on the campaign trail. I suspect that had Sarah Palin been given another four years to, you know, govern something, she might be a bit more up to speed on policy.
None of these caveats, however, make me feel any easier about the answers Palin gave to Sean Hannity in her latest interview. Time's The Page blog has excerpts.
I hereby challenge readers to translate the following Palinomics quotes into something approximating standard English:
On fixing the economy: “Through reform, absolutely. Look at the oversight that has been lack, I believe, here at the 1930s type of regulatory regime overseeing some of these corporations. And we’ve got to get a more coordinated and a much more stringent oversight regime…government can play a very, very appropriate role in the oversight as people are trusting these companies with their life savings, with their investments, with their insurance policies, and construction bonds, and everything else."
On who is responsible for the failing financial institutions: “I think the corruption on Wall Street. That’s to blame. And that violation of the public trust. And that contract that should be inherent in corporations who are spending, investing other people’s money, the abuse of that is what has got to stop.
“And it’s a matter, too, of some of these CEOs and top management people, and shareholders too not holding that management accountable, being addicted to, we call it, OPM, O-P-M, “other people’s money.”
“Spending that, investing that, not using the prudence that we expect of them. But here again, government has got to play an appropriate role in the stringent oversight, making sure that those abuses stop.”
On AIG getting government bailout: “Well, you know, first, Fannie and Freddie, different because quasi-government agencies there where government had to step in because of the adverse impacts all across our nation, especially with homeowners.
“It’s just too impacting, we had to step in there. I do not like the idea though of taxpayers being used to bailout these corporations. Today it was AIG, important call there, though, because of the construction bonds and the insurance carrier duties of AIG.”
Like Kevin Drum, I'm going to claim absolute ignorance here: what are construction bonds, exactly? Do they have anything to do with the current financial crisis? What was she trying to say by saying "construction bonds" Do any of my readers speak Palin?
Memo to McCain campaign: I think it's swell that you're going to introduce Sarah Palin to a few UN folks. Let's face it, she wasn't terribly convincing on foreign policy in that last interview. While she's in the cosmopolitan capital of the godless blue states New York City, however, maybe it would be a good idea to have her sit down and chat with a few finance people as well?
What I've learned about Sarah Palin to date is that she doesn't know a lot about foreign policy, doesn't know a lot about the economy, and she sounds just as bad in friendly interview situations as she does in slightly more probing interviews. Her best skill displayed to date was delivering a speech off a teleprompter (not insignificant in politics, mind you) and she's apparently exaggerating that skill as well.
Am I missing anything? Help me out, readers -- because her current appeal seriously escapes me.
UPDATE: Several responses on the construction bonds question suggesting that Palin was actually speaking from her own experience as governor/mayor in charge of infrastructure projects, and that because of AIG's role in insuring some of those surety bonds the point was relevant. I buy the former, but the latter dog won't hunt.
Besides, Palinologists now have a whole new issue area to defend Palin -- energy:
In defense of Palin, I think this is an episode that has to do more with mangled syntax than with a lack of knowledge on her part.
This was the first time I heard Sarah Palin speak. A few quick thoughts:
She sounded completely unconvincing on energy policy -- those were the moments when it seemed like she was clinging to the Teleprompter for dear life;
The attacks on Obama were effectively delivered -- her matter-of-fact tone means she underplays the lines, which actually gives them a bigger punch. I suspect she'll do well in that role because it will be easy for the GOP to cry foul if/when they counterattack;
Forget red state/blue state cleavages; the cultural divide in this election is urban/rural. There was very little about Palin's speech to like if you lived in a large metropolis, but plenty for rural citizens to appreciate.
The thing I will remember about this speech was not the speech itself, but watching the Palin and McCain clans play "pass the baby!" with five-month-old Trig Palin. As a parent, my first reaction upon seeing him there was, "why isn't this child sleeping in a crib somewhere?" First rule of baby-parenting: never f$%# with the sleep schedule. Also, support his neck, for Pete's sake!
Piper Palin, on the other hand, was pretty adorable.
Very little of substance was said. This continues a theme from the DNC.
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