Posted on 07/05/2009 1:15:09 PM PDT by steve-b
Eight days before the election, I spent 20 minutes alone with Sarah Palin on her campaign bus between rallies in Leesburg, Va., and Fredericksburg, George Washington's childhood home.
Our encounter brought to mind a crusty Texas editor's description of politicians who didn't know what they didn't know: Delusions of adequacy.
By then, John McCain's handlers were so spooked by the disastrous Katie Couric interview they'd hermetically sealed his running mate from media interrogators. But Tucker Eskew, the savvy Republican operative running her road show, graciously offered some "face time" - if our conversation was off the record.
Reluctantly, I took the deal. It would be my only chance for sizing up a candidate who wouldn't be the next vice president but who might leverage her newfound celebrity as a springboard to national office later on. So I can't talk about what she said.
I can report the Alaska governor was engaging, authentic, gracious and appealing. There was a refreshing lack of pretense to her, all too rare a commodity in Washington political salons.
Except for energy, however, her grasp of issues was woefully superficial. She was easily the most inarticulate veep candidate I've interviewed while covering 11 presidential campaigns.
I found myself recalling the withering assessment of one of McCain's top counselors when I challenged her foreign policy credentials the day she was unveiled.
"He's gambling he's going to live long enough to train her on foreign policy and national security," he'd blurted out.
Now, the conventional Republican wisdom says she's destroyed her political aspirations by resigning 16 months before her term in Juneau is up.
Theoretically, Palin might rehabilitate herself. The experts pronounced Richard Nixon a goner when he lost the California governor's race in 1962, bitterly noting the press wouldn't have him to kick around anymore.
But as Lloyd Bentsen would surely observe, Palin with her paper-thin résumé and intellectual incuriosity is no Dick Nixon.
Palin's cred has actually diminished since the election.
She wasn't ready for the Big Show that wet, wintry morning I met her last October. Yet her defenders are certain she'll make fools of the skeptics in 2012.
Perhaps. But if you believe that, you may be interested in purchasing that Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere.
Unlike BO of course who had such a dazzling resume?
Even is one does not support her, one needs be impressed by the number of hit pieces published about her.
Riiiiiiiiiight! Sarah Palin just increased the USA’s natural gas supply by 8% along with creating REAL jobs and she doesn’t know what she’s doing!
Pfffffffffffffffffffftttt!!!
Can I assume this author believes Barry Hussein has no business in the White House?
Guess he hadn't gotten arouond to interviewing Biden just yet. After reading so many anti Sarah articles all I can say is What---ever.
These folks are so smart, yet they still don’t realize that 0bama won the election?
Geez, the expression “stuck on stupid” never seemed more apt.
And, Obomba's "resume?" I'd say this "JOURNALIST" is a "paper thin" researcher and writer....and that's the complimentary view....
It’s a real hoot watching these bobbleheads talk about Palin’s inexperience as they kneel before their braindead, Marxist “messiah” and kiss his feet everyday. Weird.
ROFLMAO! Guess NOT!!! Who is the dunce who wrote that tripe?
Well...he learned a lot about her “grasp of the issues” in a 20-minute interview, didn’t he?
And she’s inarticulate? That must be from the lib talking points, as the term keeps popping up. I wonder what their definition of inarticulate is. If this writer really thinks Biden, for example, is more articulate than Sarah, he’s simply not paying attention.
Once again, a writer is going out of his way to attack Sarah. If she were not a contender there would be no need for this.
Thank God she has never had to run for office or negotiate a gas pipeline deal and the like, she would fail at that the second she tried she is such an idiot...
Right. Biden was smart enough for VP but not Palin?
The intricacies of foregin policy can be taught, integrity cannot.
I watched Charles Gibson the other day and I marveled at his ability to speak even though he had his lips firmly planted on Obaba’s Ass.
She has ideals. Principles. Something no one sticking it to her apparently has. She wasn’t born with a silver spoon or pedigree. That’s just fine with me.
There is a profound ring to your comment. And I would add common sense to integrity and then consider it covered.
The more I read this crap, the more sure I am that Sarah has done the right thing. How often can you get so many heads to explode all at one time from the lamestream media and even some conservative pundits?
Do believe we have found a candidate that is making some on both sides of the aisle very nervous which shows we have the right person.
They are meeting a champion for smaller government, less taxes, strong defense, and defender of the Constitution from small town America not the elistist areas of the Country. They are choking on the fact that Sarah has so much grassroots support across this Country. Sarah’s support is not phoney like Zero’s, but real people from the Conservative Republican grassroots — same grassroots that took on the GOP establishment and helped elect Dr. Coburn in Oklahoma in 2004.
Her donations will come from people all over the Country that are fed up not like the donations to ZERO from the same people that used a bunch of different names. Sarah needs to report every donation no matter how small and stick it the DemocRATs that she is totally open about donations.
We can win this won against the Dems if we all roll up our sleeves and work to elect her.
First thing everyone has to do is look at the voter rolls in their precinct and get them scrubbed NOW! Every name has to be checked out because it is beginning to look like they registered some as GOP, voted in our primaries illegally and in the general for ZERO which would make sense when some of these areas went to ZERO that should not have gone. Make a list and send a certified letter to the Election Board with the findings and follow-up.
His standing as an elitist follower of the cult of personality is evident in this article. I’d pay it no mind.
I’d rather have a president who doesn’t know who the president of Tajikistan is but thinks America is better than Tajikistan and owes nothing to them OR Azerbaijan.
Up Close.....Larry Sinclair was up close with obambi
Sarah Palin is miles ahead of any democrat, and that is with all her problems. Maybe that is what makes her Leadership style so attractive. She is far from perfect and doesn’t try and deny it by hiding behind new age morals or lack of.
With all due respect, it has nothing to do with the ignorance or poor performance of the other side. It has everything to do with the fact a majority of the citizenry of the US loves the socialism of the left and hates the old fashioned right wing democracy of the fifties. Leave it to Beaver has gotten eaten by P Diddy.
Until we raise a crop of children that actually like self-discipline, honor of the family, obeying rules, hard work and the like, this lady will be laughed out of town. Look at your children, look at the neighbors kids. Do you actually think they want conservatism back? It isn’t her...it’s the nation.
It seems to me that, if the libs didn’t think she was a force with which to be reckoned, they wouldn’t be spending this much time trying to destroy her...
Just sayin’
It’s time to take back the country.
They are all trying to put the last wooden stake in Palin’s heart, but it obviously isn’t working.
If Palin i such a loser, why all the angst?
everything that comes out of NYC is pure sh1T
UH....when they figure out (or we tell them) what it’s going to COST THEM? i.e. NO MORE AMERICAN PARADISE.... I think they’ll want conservatism....and I think they are coming around....
The New York times thinks he's the most accomplished and respected President watcher on Earth.
He has mischaracterized Cheney and Ford, and Charlie Rose loves him.
I suspect you need a barf alert.
My thoughts exactly - Biden the Buffoon.
Personally I’m agnostic on Palin, still it’s amazingly curious the media’s hyperventilating feeding frenzy on anything and everything to destroy this woman and nothing but a yawn on the lingering questions of messiah’s birthplace!
How dare anyone in the press, who never picked up a phone to interview a chicago power-player or stake out William Ayers or investigate the Marxist past of "Reverend" Wright, call ANYONE "incurious"?
What deep fried mouse poop!
Yeah, Joe Biden has TONS to say about foreign policy ALL OF IT FROM CRAZYLAND!!!
I love all of these McCain ‘advisers’ who slam Palin, but not the corpse at the top of the ticket. The incapable buffoon who refused to call out the wind-up Marxist Hussein for what he was. The guy who calls a timeout in the middle of the campaign and torpedoes his candidacy. The idiot who put himself in a position where his opponent had 10X the money to spend. The lady wasn’t the problem. The guy at the top was.
All he knows is what politicans have told him.
He has never been a foreign correspondant.
Oh! Has this hack written his opinion of ZeroBama's sophistication, experience and advance preparation for the Presidency?
Has he seen how articulate Zero is without the TOTUS?
I guess we would have to watch more of Charlie Rose, Larry King, Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman to find out..and I ain't that curious
ANybody ask Mr DeFrank how Palin managed to kick Vice President Bidens ass in the debate? I mean after all, Joe is a lefty which makes him a genius like the mastermind Prince Stimulus.
Apparently president Dumbo is extremely “curious”. He can’t wait to find out when he gets his next cheeseburger and where in the World he’s going next!!!
The more I hear the media trash Palin the more convinced I am that she is good for America. I really hate some childish, inexperienced, lazy, punkish, illiterate reporter tell me what I should think. Where do I send the checks??
de frank dreams of being larry sinclair.
LLS
What is that supposed to mean? She should be curious about intellectual things?
Well, that's leap years ahead of any Democrat. And the energy situation in this country is becoming critical. And, I bet Sarah would instinctively know which side to come down on in Iran and Honduras. The side of freedom.
Even the (figurative) ghost of Sarah Palin reproaches them. This same kind of politics of personal destruction was unleashed on Dan Quayle, not because Quayle was so horrible but because the Big Liberal Establishment absolutely hated what he stood for.
Dumbo hasn’t the foggiest why his opponents think he is wrong.
Obama is a living example of what happens when one inhales enough unicorn dander.
The poster steve-b agrees with this assessment, why would he post a barf alert?
Reporters are only impressed with people like themselves - phonies.
It’s very curious that a heavyweight slugger would jump into the ring at this late date after all the midgets have had their way with the now-battered lightweight only to confide to us that he had kept his peace all this time because of a late-night tete-e-tete bought at the price of silence now seems so remote.
It’s the same phrase they used on Bush. It means, dedicated to ignorance.
I think the whole thing is great, I’m on board w/what Mary Matalin said in a phone interview a few threads south of here. Nobody knows what SP will or will not do, least of all, me. Of course, the only possibility utterly removed from the table is that she resigned purely and honestly from the standpoint she claimed in her exit speech: That the personal litigation toll was “financially too much” or “distasteful” (or whatever characterization you’d like) and she couldn’t continue to permit Alaska state funds to be spent on her defense.
I have no prediction or agenda on her next move. I’d like to see her run for something, but I’d understand totally if she didn’t. I’d be happy for her to see her make $120K Bill Clinton or Colin Powell-type speeches. I think she’s a great lady. Never in my life have I seen a more vicious, concerted smear campaign launched against anyone, not even Nixon in the darkest days of VietNam.
I see absolutely zero cost and plenty of potential gain from her action. It is a brilliant turnaround of the Dems’ smear tactics. It costs her nothing and can only produce irritation and gnashing of teeth on the Dem side. She can mount all manner of distractive attacks on the Dems. Whether that turns into anything political is entirely up to her and what fire(s) she can ignite. I’d be thrilled for her to drive the Dems nuts speculating about her next move, and if that was the sum total of what she was able to do, I’d be content with that. I wish her nothing but the best. For those who believe or want to believe she is or could be the warhead or sparkplug for a Republican turnaround, I think it will take a much deeper bench than her alone, and in the meantime, I’m perfectly content to see her cause the Dems all the anguish she possibly can.
The single thing I like most about Sarah Palin is that she drives her opponents right over the edge. I don’t know what it is, but the ire and craziness she inspires makes it REALLY easy to spot the media idiots who can’t help but fling dogturds at her over NOTHING, even as they completely ignore that all the ethics complaints have been dismissed and that she has accomplished quite a bit in her short term.
Yup it’s a code word. If it were to be applied in any real sense, Odumbo would be found guilty. He has no clue why anybody would disagree with him.
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