Do these idiots really think a week of prepping for a debate will do more good than four days? Don't they realize how much they've already blown it for Sarah? Here's the issue.
Item One: The list of questions for this vice presidential debate is pretty much predictable: bailout, surge, Afghanistan, Russia/Georgia, health care, unemployment, experience. The overwhelming majority of those questions can be anticipated, and have stock conservative answers. It doesn't take a week to figure these out. If she's been listening to John McCain over the last two weeks, she knows them. Every follower of American politics knows them.
Item Two: Sarah Palin is a reasonably intelligent woman. She dispatched an incumbent governor in the 2006 Alaska primary, then beat a former governor in the general. I believe that like Bush, her smarts have been de-emphasized for the mouth-breather vote, but that doesn't keep her from being more than meets the eye. Now Bill Clinton or Al Gore intelligent, but smarter than she is being presumed. C-Span has aired a 2006 gubernatorial debate, and Sarah Palin sounds quite in control here:
Palin answers the question, puts it in historical context, and builds a logical case rooted in law. It's an opinion with which I vociferously disagree, but it's certainly lucid. Palin is smart enough to deliver simple answers to obvious questions. So what's the problem?
Item Three: Palin gives every sign of having too much preparation. Take one answer she gave Katie Couric when asked about the bailout:
That’s why I say, I like ever American I’m speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout.
But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. A
And trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation.
This bailout is a part of that.
Now watch this:
Every American I’m speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bailout. Because our economy is in trouble, and we need to get working again.
We need to get working on shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track, which we do by reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. Americans who need health care reform.
We need an economy that works for Americans, that is about job creation too. Trade is an opportunity, not as a scary thing. One in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that more as opportunity, as another chance at job creation.
This bailout is a chance to start that change.
I added the stuff in italics, but the rest of it is in the original. Palin had a cogent, clear, conservative answer, but she mangled the delivery. She was in such a rush to put in the composite parts that she threw in too much, and made a dog's breakfast of what should have been there.
This only happens through over-preparation. Through the discomfort of using somebody else's words, and nerves so amped up that one is unable to use them well. And that's not something that one week of preparation is going to alleviate. It's going to make the confusion and the nerves worse.
Listen, Palin's own answers to these questions won't be as good as Biden's, but they will be much, much better than Palin's attempts to give Steve Schmidt's answers. Instead of saying what she knows and believes is the right thing to say politically, she will be trying to choose from, remember, deliver, and "customize" somebody else's answers. It won't be smooth...it'll be as bad as we've seen so far.
I don't feel bad for her, and her ideas and inexperience render Sarah Palin far too dangerous to come near the White House as anything other than a visitor. So I am glad that McCain's campaign seems to be doing its utmost to unwittingly submarine Governor Palin and keep her from doing what she is able to do.