"Dave" Palin Morphs Into "Gloria" Palin

(h/t pourmecoffee blog for the idea)

TW: I chose out of respect to our national holiday to not post on Ms. Palin yesterday. And the blogosphere is crammed with takes on Ms. Palin. Yet I have decided to give it one more comment then I will move on (until of course the next great twist in the drama).

Last fall when she was first thrust cynically onto the national scene I called her Sarah "Dave" Palin after the charming Kevin Kline character from the film of the same name. "Dave" was an innocent, normal yet imminently unqualified person thrust into the role of POTUS due to convoluted circumstances. Dave's handlers did their best to disguise his true identity by filling him with just enough facts to make him seem real. I thought the title relevant for Palin last fall and still do.

My net net on her latest evolution:
1) I could care less about all of possible reasons for her move, the speculation is tedious and ultimately irrelevant (note should it develop that she has a tragic family or health issue then obviously that would change things but her "speech" was not consistent with that reason but given the below anything is possible).

2) She is corrosive to the Republican party. She is just viable enough as a national figure that the more rational elements of her party (i.e. David Frum, Mike Murphy, Peggy Noonan, George Will etc.) feel obligated to react to her respectively and seriously if tepidly. She cannot be dismissed as a crackpot. Concurrently the fire-breathers (i.e. Bill Kristol, hard-core wrongy bloggers, National Review, Fox News, Rush etc.) are sucked into actually rationalizing her behaviors which only diminish their already seriously strained credibilty.

The Dems on the other hand have a free-fire zone because...

3) She is batshit insane.

4) To quote Mr. John Mellencamp:
"Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Prob'ly die in a small town
Oh, those small communities

All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity

Educated in a small town
Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic that's me..."

I like small towns and had plenty of exposure to them growing up. Small towns are great. One can lead a wonderful life in a small town, become a great parent, a good leader etc. But one could also, if never moving beyond that town; think if one were the class valedictorian for instance, that you were the smartest person ever; or the town's top business person that you were the smartest business person ever; or the fastest athlete that you were pretty fast etc.

But of course there is a big world out there with folks with an incredible realm of diversity operating at extraordinary levels of accomplishment. To never gain exposure to those environments risks warping one's ego.

Ms. Palin epitomizes the "big fish in a small pond". She has spent her entire life personally, educationally, and professionally in small venues. She actually thinks her life perspectives to be broad, her talents extraordinary and her ambition to be POTUS sane. She combines these attributes with indomitable will, this is a potent and destructive combination.

She exhibits the worst attribute of a potential leader, she is so immature and isolated that she does not know what she does not know. She thinks she is running for POTUS but instead risks plunging into insanity. For her sake she should take a big step back and reflect on her status.

She will not because she has tasted the nectar of vociferous adulation and hero worship and it was intoxicating. Like Gloria Swanson, she will be back for more until, of course, the lights go out.

Sarah "Dave" Palin: Fembot (with new crib sheet)

TW: I did not spend much time parsing the Obama/McCain debate and I will not take too long with the VP debate. I stated after the Obama/McCain debate that I respected both candidates based upon their performances. But I do feel obligated in the unfortunate case that Sarah Palin should be elected V-POTUS that I state publically my utter disdain for this jocular fembot.

The person on stage last night did one thing, mock and attack her opponents with a endless rat-a-tat-tat of platitudes. Joe Biden at times was thrown off by the ceaseless rat-a-tat-tat but eventually burned through much of the drivel. However, the rat-a-tat-tat was so relentless many non-sequitors and inanities faded away into the ether without retribution or response from Biden or follow-up from the barely competent Gwen Ifill.

The "you betchas", "darn rights", shout-outs, etc. did nothing for me. They generally nauseated me. This is not a little job we are meant to be vetting, this is the big time, vice-leader of the Free World. Our economy rests upon the precipice of something we all really do not want to see; our country is engaged in two hot wars; one simmering, endless anti-terror campaign; and the next V-POTUS will face a very challenging decision relative to Iran and nuclear weapons. Those are the big challenges we can see with clarity, there will be others not yet so visible.

So I ask what exactly did the fembot say last night to achieve any of the following:
1) Demonstrate a grasp of any, not all just any, issues beyond platitudes and talking points.
2) Provide confidence that when faced with the 3:00 am phone call that her experience, judgment and intellect would likely lead our country down a prudent and wise path.
3) Demonstrate the ability to persuade on an issue, to inform voters as to why they should follow this person in a difficult and challenging direction (say a financial crisis "bailout")
4) Show that when faced with too little or too much information that this person could synthesize the information into coherent bites in order to identify the crucial insights. In other words display evidence that this person can "see around the corner" that nebulous but ultimately crucial skill for all executives and leaders. We can all see that which is obvious and sequential, once the platitudes are depleted could she actually formulate policy with an acuity not commonly found.
5) Provide a basis to believe this person could in the time of national and international crisis marshal the right resources to attack and resolve problems. Does this person know anybody relevant to our national challenges.

I could go on. When the fembot stated she was going to ignore the questions and just engage in a one way stream of conscious discussion with the "real America" I knew this was going to be disgusting evening. We need to know what this person does not know and more importantly what this person does not know how to do.

We do not need to know what this person merely wants us to know. If you are comfortable with only knowing what this candidate or any other candidate wants you to know, then I categorize you as a frightening voter.


This is the fembot's crib sheet (from http://www.adennak.com/blog/wordpress/ via Sullivan)

The "Dave" Chronicles: Now I Get It

TW: It is all clear to me now...Obama/Biden/McCain and all other previous candidates for POTUS and VP were lazy folks with plenty of time of their hands to feed those media monsters..."Dave" no she is biiiiizy...

From Politico:
"According to her handlers, Sarah Palin’s schedule is light on media interviews and fundraisers because she’s so popular with the Republican base that her time is better spent on the campaign trail...But she hasn’t been hitting the hustings much, either, and her relatively sparse campaign schedule underscores the McCain campaign’s struggle to develop a strategy for effectively deploying its vice presidential candidate...'I’d also make her accessible to the local media,”' [the Republican strategist] added. 'Put a reporter in her car for 10 minutes, go on the local morning shows in these venues. They’re not out to get you. They’re so flattered that you’d even ask to do it.' ”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14136.html

"Dave" (2008 ed.)

TW: As directed by Steve Schmidt, produced by John McCain and making her big screen debut, Sarah Palin

From Hotline:
"Ex-WH adviser David Gergen, on Palin talking about dealing with "gotcha" journalism: "If you want to play in the big leagues, you've got to hit big-league pitching."

GOP strategist Ed Rollins, on how the interview came across and how Palin did: "The thing that bothers me, John McCain shouldn't be in that scene. It looks like a father taking care of the daughter. And the truth of the matter is, yes, she messed up last week. She had to go back there with Katie and prove to everybody that she can handle the big-league pitching, as David said."

Does She Survive At This Point?

Fey actually sounded more convincing than "Dave" using some of the same phrases used by Palin. I repeat this nomination is an irresponsible, reckless farce.

Katie Couric With "Dave" Palin Vol. 3

TW: Watch Couric's eyes, one can read her mind, we have all been in job interviews where we slipped off the rails and the interviewer could barely contain their derision. Couric was there last night.

From Rod Dreher (conservative blogger and former "Dave" adherent)
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/09/palin-debacle-on-cbs-evening-n.html
"Couric's questions are straightforward and responsible. Palin is mediocre, again, regurgitating talking points mechanically, not thinking. Palin's just babbling. She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero... remember the morning I woke up in my college dorm room and went in to take my final exam in my Formal Logic class. I knew I was unready. Massively unready. And now I was going to be put to the ultimate test. I sat down in Dr. Sarkar's class and resolved to wing it. Of course I failed the exam and failed the class, because I had no idea what I was talking about. I wasn't a bad kid, or even a stupid kid. I was just badly unprepared, and in way over my head...New Palin excerpt up, in which she discusses why having Russia next to Alaska gives her relevant foreign policy experience. I am well and truly embarrassed for her. I think she's a good woman who might well be a great governor of Alaska. But good grief, just watch this train wreck"

Worry Not "Dave" Palin Has Been Immunized From Witchcraft

TW: Breaking new ground for VP candidates (and possible Prez) "Dave" Palin in 2005 was protected from demons and other witchcraft by the Rev. Muthee, I feel better knowing this hopefully you do as well.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvCzZ0SoitdKvCm5L-qbcB6KSGUQD93DIUQ80

40% Of Voters Actually Believe "Dave" Palin Is Qualified To Be POTUS

TW: bloggery is teasing a new NBC/WSJ due for release tonight with the news that 49% of voters regard "Dave" Palin as unqualified to be POTUS. While that is a low result, to think 40% of voters actually think "Dave" (the original "Dave" was not qualified either but Kevin Kline was in a movie after all) is qualified truly concerns me.

From NBC:
"Forty-nine percent say that Palin is unqualified to be president if the need arises, compared with 40 percent who say she's qualified.
By contrast, 64 percent believe Biden is qualified to be president, versus just 21 percent who disagree."

Brown and Mitchell Show Frustration With the "Dave" Palin Cocoon

McCain Joins "Dave" Palin In the Cocoon

From WaPo:
"Mr. McCain's selection of an inexperienced and relatively unknown figure was unsettling, and the campaign's decision to keep her sequestered from serious interchanges with reporters and voters serves only to deepen the unease. Mr. McCain is entitled to choose the person he thinks would be best for the job. He is not entitled to keep the public from being able to make an informed assessment of that judgment. Ms. Palin's speech-making skills are impressive, but the more she repeats the same stump speech lines, the queasier we get. Nor have her answers to the gentle questioning she has encountered provided any confidence that Ms. Palin has a grasp of the issues.

A candidate who stiffs the media on the campaign trail isn't likely to perform better once in office"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/AR2008092001763.html

Sarah "Dave" Palin In the Cocoon

From NYT:
At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

From Andrew Sullivan:
"Are you f'ing kidding me? We are now rigging the debate formats to compensate for a know-nothing, mendacious Manchurian candidate drilled in meaningless talking points? And the Obama team agreed to this? And so did the press?

It is now 24 days since [Palin] was announced as a potential president of the United States next January and she still hasn't given a news conference or has any plans to hold one. This black-out of all serious press access has never happened in modern American political history before.

If that doesn't concern you, what will? "

From TW: if anyone out there is not not concerned, can you please articulate why you are not?

ABC Gibson Palin Interview: Two Views Of Reality

TW: I would ask you to take the time to at least watch the condensed highlights piece. Then ask yourself understanding this is not someone interviewing for admission to undergrad this the potential POTUS come Feb 2009:

Brief video highlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z75QSExE0jU

Where is the nuance typically associated with a Prez or VP?
Where is any intellectual depth expressed?
The "Dave" analogy- do not her responses seem like barely understood recitations of programmed bullet points?

Ultimately to me the two perspectives below effectively frame where we stand. You either rationalize and dismiss the ignorance and rant against the media's fault for bothering to ask or you are deeply concerned. Note both perspectives are those of pundits affiliated with right-wing organizations

Lisa Shiffren from National Review (conservative mag)
"...the Bush Doctrine is a multi-faceted policy, not clearly defined, and only intermittently adhered to in any of its particulars..{It is}...inside DC/foreign policy establishment jargon. It is not used widely in the media, even in more serious discussions of whichever aspect is under scrutiny. So a well read state-level political leader, who followed the Bush Administration foreign policy in, say, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the WSJ, or on ABC news (God help us), would not necessarily have a deep field of references. It was the clearest "gotcha" moment of the interview.

Is it fair to ask a would-be vice president these questions? Sure. But I just don't recall seeing anyone quiz Barack Obama on the details of any particular set of policies early on (or later). And, for the record, it just looks condescending and inappropriate for one of the great minds of the national media to sit, notebook in hand, quizzing this younger woman, as someone said, as if she were a grad student. Just physically, in those chairs, him leaning back and her leaning in, costs her the appearance of power. This is not how we usually get to know Governors. Did anyone do this to Bill Clinton when he came from the hinterland? Jimmy Carter? (That might have been helpful...)

Actually, the set up made the previously invariably likeable Charlie Gibson seem like a condescending jerk. Uh oh...there goes the brand."

From Norm Ornstein (scholar at the AEI- a prime neo-con "think"-tank)
"She had me at hello Charley-- had me scared to death. Not a single doubt that she is ready to be president-- everyone, no matter how experienced, should have doubts about the ability to take that job. A combination of utter inexperience and utter arrogance is about the worst possible combination I can imagine. Not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is would be bad enough, but saying unequivocally that Georgia should be in NATO-- meaning we would now perhaps be in a state of war with Russia-- and then without a beat saying that military action should be the last resort-- shows a series of knowledge and logic gaps that ought to shake every foreign policy specialist, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, to his or her roots. Maybe they can force feed her enough facts to skate through a debate, and maybe her self-confidence will still play well with many voters, but this first cut performance underscores our worst fears.

NYT: Sarah "Dave" Palin Is In Fact Learning Her Lines

TW: To follow-up on my "Dave" storyline for Ms. Palin, we see the McCain campaign making steady progress...

"With new reports coming out daily about Ms. Palin’s record in Alaska, and a more aggressive offensive from Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, Mr. McCain’s team has issued a partywide, all-hands-on-deck...

The McCain campaign is regularly battling reports from news organizations that have the potential to undermine the image that it has presented of Ms. Palin as a reformer.On Wednesday, a new report on Politico.com detailed Ms. Palin’s requests for federal appropriations as governor, including money for studies on the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals, the very sorts of pet spending projects Mr. McCain has lampooned...

Three {advisors} were on the plane to Alaska with Ms. Palin: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain’s economic adviser; Steve Biegun, a former staff member of Mr. Bush’s National Security Council who has taken leave from his Ford Motors job to advise Ms. Palin; and Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.

Aides have developed a set of presumed questions and answers that they are walking Ms. Palin through. Aides traveling with Ms. Palin have reported back to associates that she is a fast study — asking few questions of her policy briefers but quickly repeating back their main points — who already has considerable ease and experience before cameras. A former aide in Alaska who had helped prepare Ms. Palin for her campaign debates there said she had a talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites. The aide said she generally prefers light preparatory materials to heavy briefing
books"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/us/politics/11palin.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1221152528-wLodLGV/UYTSmF9Ng0vJhg

The Cone of Silence, Wagging the Dog and the Return of Dave

From various news reports:
"According to the Associated Press, a McCain campaign aide "told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said."

TW: Thursday night Ms. Palin will provide her first interview to ABC and Charlie Gibson, my assumption is that she will do fine. The interview will be very controlled, presumeably she has been prepping feverishly, she is intelligent and articulate.

The interview from my perspective is essentially irrelevant.

I have made numerous references in this blog to the 1990's movie, Wag the Dog with Robert DeNiro in which the DeNiro character created a fictitious war in order to spin favorably his clients electoral positioning. Modern day campaigns use similiar, if not quite literal, tactics often. The Republicans have it down to a science. When I see the Dog being Wagged I will note it in the blog titles.

However, the more relevant movie analogy relative to the cone of silence imposed around Ms. Palin is not Wag the Dog but Dave. Another 1990's flick starring Kevin Kline (yet another distinguished IU alum btw) as the Presidential lookalike thrust into the role of actual President due to unforeseen and utterly ridiculous circumstances. In Dave the Kline character was sequestered from the public and press while various advisors injected him with enough policy and rhetoric to make him professionally functional.

A similiar exercise is apparently in process with Ms. Palin.

For the first time in history we have a VP nominee who has been sequestered from the press and any public questioning but for extremely limited and minutely controlled events. The very fact that the McCain campaign believes it necessary to sequester its candidate speaks to the inherent vacuousness of the selection. Imagine 60 days from the Presidential election, a VP nominee so inexperienced in national and international governance, so lacking in his or her own perspectives on those national and international issues that she must be injected by advisors with every possible policy plank and talking point. One reads stories of "cram sessions" with distinguished foreign policy and domestic policy advisors. This is the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, the alleged beacon for hope and leadership for billions throughout the world. And Ms. Sarah "Dave" Palin is in cram sessions.