We’re debating whether being part-time mayor of a small town in Alaska qualifies you to be president.
The McCain camp tells Mike Allen that Palin will go after Joe Biden tonight, trying to catch him out on old foreign policy positions that didn’t pan out. Right. I don’t buy that because I don’t think they want to risk getting her into any detailed discussion of any foreign policy or defense issue. What strikes me as much more likely is that they’ll send her in with a handful of prefab digs or snark lines. Their hope would be that whatever comes out of the debate itself — that some clever or incendiary snark line will dominate the next day’s news cycle and get the campaign coverage on to some Obama-Biden shortcoming rather than on Palin being an imbecile and McCain looking like he’s about to go postal.
McCain’s decision to pull out of Michigan is the news of the day. But here’s what strikes me as significant about this: I think this is the McCain campaign telling us that they do not believe the latest shift in the race’s momentum is temporary. They believe this is the terrain they are going to have to play on for the final four weeks. And that dictates digging in in the 2004 red states and hoping they can pull off wins in every one of those states.
National Review argues the advantages of having an unstable personality as president.
In a conference call with reporters this afternoon that was heavy on damage control in the wake of reports that McCain is conceding Michigan to Obama, the McCain campaign acknowledged that the six core battleground states are now Ohio, Virgina, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and North Carolina. In other words, as Josh noted earlier, McCain is now fighting just to hold onto the red states Bush won in 2004.
Is it acceptable now to use infant children as political props?
The spin from the Obama campaign and from various independent commentators (who seem to mean it) is that Sarah Palin is actually a pretty good debater. So, given how ridiculous she’s been in these network interviews, is there any way that can possibly be true?
In a narrow sense at least, I think the answer is, Yes. When we were doing research on her position on the Road to Nowhere back during her 2006 gubernatorial run, I watched a number of her debates. And she was pretty good. She definitely held her own. She played the role of the common sense political outsider. And she was good at turning a line, especially ones that were cutting without seeming angry or hostile.
The key though was the issues. Those debates were about local Alaska issues that she clearly knew well enough to give pat answers. They were also highly structured debates where there wasn’t a lot of give and take. But it seemed clear that when she felt comfortable with the issues and had some sense of where they were, she was confident and affable and came off well. But that’s the key. She appears to know nothing about national economic or foreign policy issues. It’s as simple as that.
I also think my colleague Greg Sargent is right on the mark when he says that the terrible interviews actually raised the bar for Palin. As they say, better to stay mum and have people assume you’re a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt. At the moment, I think the consensus is that Palin’s a fool. So just stumbling through with some bromides, I don’t think that will do it. Because people will assume that she’s a fool who got off a few bromides. Successfully executed zingers may juice up McCain’s core supporters. But I think to change non-right-wingers’ views about whether Palin belongs in the White House she has to do or say something that gives some reason to believe that those interviews gave an unrealistic view of her.
9:03 PM … “Can I call you Joe.” That was actually well done. Cosmetic, yes. But still good optics.
9:04 PM … Biden’s strategy seems to be not to look at anybody.
9:06 PM … Oversight? McCain for greater oversight? Just a few days ago, Palin got stumped when asked for any example of McCain being for any kind of oversight.
9:10 PM … Really hoping that Biden comes back at McCain’s record of always being for lax oversight … He’s sort of doing it here, but not really driving the point home …
9:13 PM … Palin repeats the $42,000 dollar a year tax increase lie.
9:14 PM … Now, this is a Joe Biden I can believe in.
9:17 PM … Palin, lie, lie, lie …
9:18 PM … Isn’t this government out of the way line in a bit of tension with Palin’s call for tighter regulation?
9:21 PM … Hmmm. That was pretty good on Biden’s part and he’s getting into his rhythm. But there were a lot of numbers flying around in that health care answer.
9:24 PM … Wait, Palin undid what was done in 2005 Energy Bill? Really?
9:45 PM … Someone go back and see how Palin said the economic crisis was a toxic mess on Main Street that was threatening to spill over to Wall Street.
9:51 PM … Spain!
9:56 PM … Very solid from Biden.
9:56 PM … Wo … what happened with the nuclear weapons answer?
10:00 PM … Did Palin just get the name wrong of the top US General in Afghanistan?