McCain Raises Expectations for Palin in Debate
John McCain, seeing that Sarah Palin’s approvals are going down the drain (especially among independents), is now pushing a pile of chips on the table. He’s betting that in the VP debate tonight, Palin shows herself to be a stellar expert on foreign policy. That’s the upshot of his interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR yesterday. Yes, McCain is that desperate.
John McCain is hurting. The latest polls are beginning to solidify at a substantial Obama lead, and the shakeout on this financial crisis is far from over. I heard a report on radio yesterday that McDonalds is suspending its usual policy on extending credit to it’s franchisees. A McDonalds having liquidity problems? No matter what happens in the vote in the House tomorrow, we’ve got more economics on our minds from here to election day. It isn’t just the national polls (latest AP poll) that have John McCain ready to make another roll of the dice; the polling in Arizona, John McCain’s home state, is getting uncomfortably tight. So what’s the content of that roll of the dice McCain the gambler is about to make? He’s praising Sarah Palin, hoping for a big win tonight. It’s in an interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR. Here’s the first bit:
Palin is a relative political novice, and questions about her readiness to step in as commander in chief if necessary have intensified in the wake of an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News that was roundly criticized. Some conservative pundits have even suggested that Palin should step down. But McCain defended his VP choice.
“I’ve turned to her for advice many times in the past,” McCain says. “I can’t imagine turning to Sen. [Barack] Obama or [Sen. Joseph] Biden because they’ve been wrong. They were wrong about Iraq. They were wrong about Russia.”
McCain specifically praised Palin’s knowledge of energy issues, as well as her oversight of the natural resources of Alaska and her experience running that state’s government.
That’s from the NPR preview of the interview, and perhaps throws out the most egregious and bald statement McCain made, but that statement doesn’t have McCain seeming to mock Palin herself as he grapples with his syntax in trying to find a way to defend his running mate. Oh, this is torture to read if you ever had an ounce of respect for John McCain. Heck, it would be torture to read if presented by a high schooler at his debating society. But John McCain seemingly wants to boost the stakes for tonight’s debate. All in? I don’t suppose he’s going all in with his bets on Sarah Palin, but his mindset seems focused on the daily as opposed to the long-term campaign issues, and Palin’s polling numbers are getting shredded. A poll reported at MSNBC has independent voters thinking she is unqualified for the job by a margin of 2 to 1. So McCain makes the claim that, though he met Sarah Palin for the very first time just five weeks ago, he has turned to her for advice “many times in the past.” This is a line that someone ought to call McCain on.
Now for the Busted Syntax of John McCain, wherein he wanders into Sarah Palin territory, from the NPR interview with Steve Inskeep. Here he is exaggerating Palin’s experience yet again:
Senator, as you know, the vice presidential debate comes on Thursday — your running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, against Joe Biden. Gov. Palin has been asked about her foreign policy qualifications and cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as one reason she’s qualified. I’d like to ask you, senator, what specifically do you believe that Alaska’s proximity to Russia adds to Palin’s foreign policy qualifications?
Well, I think the fact that they have had certain relationships, but that’s not the major she has stated, and you know that. The major reason she has stated is because she has the knowledge and background on a broad variety of issues, including probably the major challenge of America, and that’s energy independence. And she has been responsible, taken on the oil companies, and we now are going to have a $40 billion natural gas pipeline. She has oversighted the natural gas and oil and natural resources of the state of Alaska and, by the way, quit when she saw corruption there. She has the world view that I have. She is very highly qualified and very knowledgeable.
She has the world view McCain has. That’s damning in itself, as it is the world view where he confuses the name of the leader of Spain, where he confuses who has decision-making ability in Iran, where he fully endorsed the failed invasion of Iraq. We don’t need that world view, and we don’t need McCain’s mangled syntax as he defends and tries to prop up Sarah Palin. But this is more than a prop. John McCain has as much as said that Sarah Palin is an expert on foreign policy. Now watch her duck foreign policy questions tonight with her own mangled syntax.
But the interview shows more than just the rising expectations McCain has for Sarah Palin. It shows how dearly out of touch McCain is, as he defends his campaign on a particularly egregious attack ad against Barack Obama before veering off on a completely unrelated subject, like some 12 year old with ADHD. (12 year olds, even with ADHD, are cute. There is no excuse for a leader who wishes to be President going off on unrelated tangents. Also from the NPR interview with Steve Inspeep:
Have you come back to your advisers at any point and said — for example, the ad that ran with your name on it saying that Barack Obama supported comprehensive sex education for primary school students, something that factcheck.org said was wrong. Have you ever gone to your staff and said, “Take that ad off. It’s not right”?
It’s factually correct. It’s absolutely factually correct, and you can go on my Web site and you can see the exact language of the bill that Senator Obama sponsored. But the point is that if he had agreed to the town hall meetings that I asked him to do all around the country, like Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had once agreed to do, the tenor of this campaign would be dramatically different. If we’d have gone around the country, and stood side-by-side before the American people and listened to their hopes and dreams and aspirations, the whole tenor of this campaign would be dramatically different. I’m proud of the campaign we are running, the ads are factually correct. And if someone named factcheck.org or anybody else doesn’t agree with it, I respectfully disagree with their conclusions.
I’d truly love to see McCain’s sneer and hear his sarcasm as he made this answer. Alas, we can only hear the interview on the NPR page, but McCain’s sarcasm certainly comes across. It’s right here, rivaling the sneers and sarcasm of his interview with the DeMoines Register.
McCain is desperate. Let’s hope Palin sinks him for good tonight.
“…the polling in Arizona, John McCain’s home state, is getting uncomfortably tight.”
Home states ain’t no sure things and Arizona is no exception:
In 1964, Goldwater just barely carried the state; the result from Arizona was
Lyndon Johnson 237,753 49.5 - Barry Goldwater 242,535 50.4
McCain is lucky his state is populated by so many Senior Citizens like himself.
“I’ve turned to her for advice many times in the past,” McCain says.
That’s the best part of the quote. Dude met her for the first time in fucking February of this year at the National Governors Association meeting.
Just goes to illustrate what a FUCKING LIAR McCain is.
But it’s also amusing to hear hims say that he wouldn’t go to Joe Biden or Barack Obama for advice. It’s like livejournal drama:. “Well I wouldn’t talk to Joey Biden or Barry Obama… Cuz Sarah’s my new BFF!” Dude, they’re your political rivals. Just how fucking stupid do you think we are? What are we in fucking high school?
I fail to see how any one with more than two brain cells could vote for this git. Barry may not be ideal ( especially with his vote on the Let Wall Street Rape the American Taxpayer bill last night). But at least he doesn’t talk to people like they are beneath him.
The way the campaign is going for McSame, the last five weeks that he has known Palin probably seems like a lifetime.
Palin will probably do fine in this debate tonight. For a given definition of the word “fine.”
Her tactic in the Alaskan gubenatorial debates was to evade the question. She’ll do that here. She’ll get asked a question and she’ll use some element of it to careen it off into a question she’d rather answer. It’s a tactic that works, it allows her to stick to her talking point in the initial 2 minute response, and then she can let Joe Biden have the remaining time to bluster and fill with his own words (giving Biden a camera and two minutes of bluster time is like giving a 12 year old the key to the candy store, so she just needs to step back and “let Joe be Joe”). If Joe fills that time then Palin wins - she delivered her talking point, sounded decent while doing it, and gives maximal time for Biden to make a gaffe that can turn the post-debate spin into “what about that gaffe that Biden made”.
Where she may fail (and I emphasize the word “may” here because who knows) is if Biden has been practicing really hard on making accusations about what Senator McCain wants to do. If he doesn’t go after what she just said, but rather goes after what McCain has said on the stump or what’s been in his campaign statements. Shade it with a Democratic framing and set it loose. VP’s are supposed to be defending the guy upticket from attacks like that after all and if she lets it lie, or agrees with Biden, or gives a garbled answer that can be mocked by Tina Fey one more time then she loses. If she fights back but gets McCain’s position wrong, she loses. The only way she wins is if she fights back and get close enough to McCain’s position that the campaign wants to get out there and own her words (instead of trying to label it as “gotcha journalism” or whatever).
Palin gets tripped up by policy questions because the answers she wants to give and the answers that McCain has for things are not the same. And she’s supposed to be giving McCain’s answers not her own. If she’d had a decade or so in the public spotlight - or if she were a trained actress - she might be able to pull that off. But a month of crash coaching on what she’s supposed to say isn’t really enough.
This is why I have a tiny smidgen of sympathy for the argument that she’d be doing better if they “let Sarah be Sarah”. She probably would look less stupid because she’d have a better chance of articulating positions she actually holds instead of trying to articulate McCain’s. The downside of that is what happens when she lets loose with something that contradicts a McCain position - as with the question of cross-border raids into Pakistan the other week. It makes McCain look worse for having a VP who not only doesn’t agree with him, but isn’t toeing the party line. And when she’s agreeing with Obama that just makes it a zillion times worse for McCain.
McCain is lucky his state is populated by so many Senior Citizens like himself.
Yeah. Good thing none of them are worried about the economy tanking and losing their nest eggs, isn’t it? I’d bet McCain would be worried about his history of calls for privatizing Social Security and his long history of being a proponent for Wall Street deregulation if that were the case.
NonyNony, when they start worrying about those nest eggs, then we will see a landslide. That Quinnipiac poll in Florida just may be telling us that Seniors are starting to do that worrying.