If John McCain wins, for all that has happened over the last eight years in Iraq and elsewhere, we would get a new president even more closely tied to the DC neoconservative axis than President Bush has ever been.
A coalition of right-wing churches is pushing a test case to allow them to be tax exempt and endorse political candidates.
New McCain-Palin TV ad hits the airwaves touting “The Original Mavericks.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
I spent most of the day today traveling and then giving a talk up at Union College a few hours north of New York City. So I was offline most of the day. And though I heard about Charlie Gibson bagging the first interview with Sarah Palin, I was eager to get home and read the details.
Well, now I’ve read them. And it’s pretty clear this farce is going to be close to unwatchable. Set aside that this comes just on the heels of McCain campaign manager Rick Davis saying Palin would not sit for any interviews “until the point in time when she’ll be treated with respect and deference.” The tell comes high up in the AP story by David Bauder. The second graf reads …
Palin will sit down for multiple interviews with Gibson in Alaska over two days, most likely Thursday and Friday, said McCain adviser Mark Salter.
Political interviews are never done like this. Because it makes the questioning entirely at the discretion of the person being interviewed and their handlers. The interviewer has to be on their best behavior, at least until the last of the ‘multiple interviews’ because otherwise the subsequent sittings just won’t happen. For a political journalist to agree to such terms amounts to a form of self-gelding. The only interviews that are done this way are lifestyle and celebrity interviews. And it’s pretty clear that that is what this will be.
Here’s some more to inspire confidence …
The interview is a coup for Gibson, who also had the only sit-down with McCain during the Republican National Convention. During that interview, he did not question McCain about Palin’s family, a decision that he fretted about for hours, Gibson said in a Web log posted last week.
“Once you know about her daughter’s pregnancy, once you know about her husband’s political interest in the Alaska Independent Party, once you know about the special nature of their latest child, I think that’s enough,” Gibson wrote.
The relevant questions about Palin all related to her experience and policy positions as a mayor and governor of Alaska.
ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said he did not believe Gibson’s stated stance about family questions was key to securing the interview.
It will be unwatchable.
There’s a lot of complaining that the McCain campaign won’t allow anyone to interview Sarah Palin. And for the major news outlets that would be in line for such an interview there’s a logic to keeping up the drumbeat. But McCain campaign manager Rick Davis is right: It’s their campaign to run. They can do it how they want. Everyone else should just shut up, stop complaining and call the reality for what it is.
Davis says Palin won’t give any interviews until she feels “comfortable” giving one. And this morning he added that she wouldn’t give any “until the point in time when she’ll be treated with respect and deference.”
Sarah Palin could be the President of the United States in four and a half months. We tend to think of this as an abstraction; but it’s true. And yet today she’s so unprepared and knows so little about the challenges and tasks facing the country that she can’t even give a softball interview.
That’s really all we need to know. Yes, she’s off being prepped at some undisclosed location. And I’ve little doubt that by the time her debate rolls around she’ll be sufficiently pumped full of slogans and bromides to make a show of it. But now, this moment, is the one that tells us all we need to know.
As is so often the case, Palin is the incarnation of the Republican slurs. The darling of the hard-right; she gives stem-winding speeches. She pushes all their buttons. But she’s such a lightweight, they can’t risk letting her answer a few questions. Not even on Fox. They know she’s not ready and probably never will be. But they think the politics might work for them.
Late Update: Here’s video of Davis:
Sarah Palin is still avoiding interviews — and sticking to the teleprompter. That and other political news in today’s Election Central Sunday Roundup.
Do we need to remind Joe Biden he was hired to take the gloves off.
Late Update: Am I actually seeing more examples of Obama hitting Palin than Biden? WTF, not Obama’s job.
Latter Update: Also, time to start calling McCain the liar that he is. On taxes principally. He’s lying about taxes. Can’t be said enough, has to start now.