OK, so how many of you who can’t countenance the depressing reality that Sarah Palin remains a viable presidential candidate and are infuriated that the media enabled her book-huckster tour – still watched either the Oprah Winfrey or the Barbara Walters’ interviews? Same here.
Enough to give perverse curiosity a bad name. Think: “Octo-Mom.”
But from a journalistic rationale, one can’t help but wonder what might have resulted from the bizarre crucible that was the 2008 presidential campaign, when Palin was John McCain’s Flail Mary pass to revive his long-shot chances. Had she changed? Would, candidly, the word “grown” be operative? Had she morphed from over-the-top, GOP celebrity and Mainstream America’s favorite hockey mom to attractive, reasonably informed political operative and credible, 2012 presidential timber?
No.
Actually, the word “groan” would be more relevant. If anything, Palin is more arrogant. She has well-rehearsed, index-card answers to questions about quitting as Alaska’s governor, raising kids and extending Levi Johnston a Thanksgiving dinner invite (sort of). When in doubt economically, she will still drop Ronald Reagan’s name and simplistically repeat, mantra-like: “Encourage the free market; lower taxes; get government out of the way.” Next question.
Palin has too many fawning acolytes, conservative-pundit boosters and long, book-buying queues to not think she isn’t special and a genuine player on the world’s geopolitical stage if she so chooses. Not nearly enough lipstick for this pig-in-a-political-poke.
Anyhow, anyone else yell follow-up questions to Winfrey or Walters? To wit:
- “OK, you’ve given us your take on the designer clothes, the tight scripts, the suffocating orchestration by the McCain campaign — and you’ve dumped all over Steve Schmidt and other handlers. By all accounts, however, Joe Biden didn’t go through this. Hell, the Mondale people didn’t put Geraldine Ferraro through anything remotely like that either. So why you? Was it because they flat-out knew you weren’t qualified to be vice president but were more than qualified to look good, effectively deliver a prepared speech and be a template for whatever Middle America wanted in a candidate – from being pro-life, to drilling for energy independence to field-dressing a liberal?
- “Did you ever feel that it wouldn’t be fair to the country for someone as lightly read and blatantly uninformed as you – the governor of a state with fewer people than some congressional districts – to be a proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency?
- “It sounds like you were frustrated by the McCain campaign’s straitjacketing. But, much more to the point, weren’t you, well, insulted? Or was that just the price of fame and a talk-show gig down the road?
- “And, let me get this straight, you have no problem with the Israelis continuing to build settlements – because they ‘need the room.’ You don’t have to be enamored of nuance to know that this is woefully simplistic. Want to try that one again?
- “You want this publicity because you want to sell as many copies of ‘Going Rogue’ as you can. This obviously pays a helluva lot better than being a moose-stew governor – and your tour fortuitously takes you to all kinds of key battleground states. So, would it be too much to ask that you dispense with scripted, pre-tested, simplistic answers to serious questions?
- “Shouldn’t your ghost writer be here too?”