I'm not sure we're ever going to see Gov. Sarah Palin tested by our world class media (ahem), so, in the absence of access to Palin, people need to be directed to her Charlie Rose appearance from Oct. 2007, where she pales in comparison to Gov. Janet Napolitano. While Gov. Napolitano addresses Charlie's questions and followups directly and in detail, Gov. Palin demonstrates a weakness on the issues, redirecting issues back to "energy" (i.e. oil) and avoiding substantive responses.
My take... Sarah Palin is very personable, well-spoken (no Bush, here), telegenic..... but is woefully thin on issues (at the time of this roundtable) -- for which she uses her media skills to compensate.
Reviewing the interview... Charlie Rose asks Gov. Napolitano about education, and she goes into great detail in her response and followups. And then Rose directs the education topic to Gov. Palin, but she immediately redirects the question, based on funding, to energy revenues and veers off into the need to drill, drill, drill -- and Charlie doesn't bother to ask her any followup question on education. Palin skates without addressing education. Charlie discusses health care in detail with Napolitano and then comes to Palin. Gov. Palin starts fidgeting and tells Charlie that it's so complicated that she wouldn't ordinarily even start to get into it in an interview "like this," explains that her approach is to assemble a task force to look into other task forces' efforts, and then redirects the question over to Napolitano, in order to get out of the hole and avoid any followups. Tell me... what did Palin say, at all, about health care?
Sidebar: This last tactic is something with which Joe Biden needs to be aware, and prepared to address. Don't jump in and bail her out when she tries one of these redirects; instead, respond that you'd like her to continue with her thoughts; that you don't what to interrupt her and will comment after she's finished.
And then Palin borders on the vile when she brings up her son going to Iraq and challenging politicians to put the country first, saying "every elected official should be doing everything they can to secure these United States." Aside from using her son as a political trophy, her challenge to others rings very hollow, even cynical, given what I've seen of her record.
Doling out the money as royalty checks seems to be exceedingly short-sighted -- though it does help explain her high approval ratings in Alaska. To Gov. Palin's credit, at least she was honest about the Bridge to Nowhere funds, during the roundtable. But it makes me wonder what happened between Oct. 2007 and now for her to evolve her own Bosnia sniper fire elaboration on the issue.
Oh. Right.
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