Sarah Palin Interview Watch II

Sarah Palin is now the Republican nominee for vice president.  She has never done an interview as a national candidate.

Yesterday, sassy muckraker Matt Drudge reported that Oprah Winfrey, an Obama supporter, has refused to have Palin on her show. He posted this item:

BIG DILEMMA: OPRAH BALKS AT HOSTING SARAH PALIN; STAFF DIVIDED Fri Sep 05 2008 08:55:46 ET

Oprah Winfrey may have introduced Democrat Barack Obama to the women of America — but the talkshow queen is not rushing to embrace the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket!

Oprah’s staff is sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. “Half of her staff really wants Sarah Palin on,” an insider explains. “Oprah’s website is getting tons of requests to put her on, but Oprah and a couple of her top people are adamantly against it because of Obama.”

One executive close to Winfrey is warning any Palin ban could ignite a dramatic backlash!

It is not clear if Oprah has softened her position after watching Palin’s historic convention speech.

Last year, Winfrey blocked an appearance by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, timed to a promotional tour of his autobiography.

Oprah and executive producer Sheri Salata, who has contributed thousands of dollars to Obama’s campaign, refused requests for comment.   

Today, the story is updated with a statement from Oprah saying that she’d love to have Palin on after the election.  This is of course entirely academic since Sarah Palin refuses to be interviewed (except for the local journalists to whom she might speak in various non-cosmopolitan battleground towns) .

Meanwhile, the LA Times has a breakdown of who will be appearing on which Sunday talk shows.  Notice who’s missing?

Three of the four now-official candidates on the major-party presidential tickets are scheduled to sit down for questions: Democrat Barack Obama on ABC’s “This Week,” his running mate, Joe Biden, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Republican John McCain on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

So no interviews for Palin in the foreseeable future.  Pathetic. 

If Palin is hot to be on Oprah, though, I’d love to see it done this way: Just as the show opens and Palin walks onto the set, Tom Brokaw, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer or Wolf Blitzer walks on from the other side and is announced as the day’s special guest host. You go girl!

Sarah Palin Interview Watch

The way we learn about candidates and their preparedness to deal with difficult issues is through their records and interviews.  Sarah Palin has no record on foreign and defense policy and, despite her speech to the RNC, her views are virtually unknown to the American people. 

By contrast, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and John McCain have been forced to give answers in split seconds to difficult questions — without scripts.  That’s the least we should expect from someone seeking national office.

Sarah Palin is not giving interviews.  The McCain campaign’s defense to the decision to keep her away from difficult questions is as pathetic as anything I’ve ever seen.  Via Swampland:

The American people don’t care to know what their potential president knows about national security, foreign policy, the economy or anything else? Of course not.  We’re only at war in two different countries, facing a resurgent Russia, multiple crises around the world and living with an economy which is deteriorating by the day.

Now we learn that not only will Palin not be available for interviews with the election two months off, she’s leaving the campaign trial and going back to Alaska.

This is a simple cost/benefit analysis by the McCain campaign.  The calculus is this: The campaign loses more if Palin gives an interview in which she looks foolish and unprepared for the vice presidency or presidency than it loses by simply enduring the critisim and suspicison it knows for certain it will face by locking her away. 

The campaign can only have concluded that it is better to face speculation that she’s hiding from interviews solely because she doesn’t know the answers to difficult questions than it is to let her give one and confirm it.  That’s the only reason to take the enormous risk of keeping her stowed away.  

A very good friend’s frequent references to Abraham Lincoln sums it up: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”  And this is the kind of removal of all doubt the McCain campaign is trying to avoid (I can’t find the video, but you get the idea):

Texas Gov. George W. Bush is enduring sharp criticism for being unable to name the leaders of four current world hot spots, but President Bill Clinton says Bush “should, and probably will, pick up” those names. 

The front-runner for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination faltered Thursday in an international affairs pop quiz posed by Andy Hiller, a political reporter for WHDH-TV in Boston.

Hiller asked Bush to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. Bush was only able to give a partial response to the query on the leader of Taiwan, referring to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui simply as “Lee.” He could not name the others.

Bush gave that interview in November 1999.  The 2000 election didn’t happen until a full year later.  Between the interview and November 2000, he had time to learn the issues.  He hired Condoleezza Rice and studied as hard as could.  Look how well that turned out.  

Sarah Palin has 60 days.

Bill O’Reilly Interviews Megyn Kelly About US Weekly Cover

Yesterday, the internet and I noted that Megyn Kelly went ballistic on an US Weekly rep over its Sarah Palin cover, which Kelly obviously thought was anti-Palin.  Tonight, O’Reilly interviewed Kelly from St. Paul, where she is speaking on behalf of reporting on the Republicans at their convention.

Kelly was still in a tizzy.  She said that the problem was that people who don’t pay attention to politics all the time might not know anything about Palin other than what they see on the cover of US Magazine. Kelly said that she likes the magazine and enjoys seeing it when she’s in line at the grocery store.

O’Reilly joked that the next time she went to the store, he would help her out by carrying her “packages.”  I’m sure he would, especially if she were buying 1 cup dried chickpeas or 16 oz. can of chickpeas or garbanzo beans, 1 large onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 3 tablespoons of fresh parsley, 1 teaspoon coriander, 1 teaspoon cumin, 2 tablespoons flour, salt, pepper and oil for frying.

Mmmm, falafel.

Bill O’Reilly Pwned by….Bill O’Reilly

What a tool.

The DNC Has Its Shit Together

McCain = Bush.  That’s all this election is about, and the DNC nails it.

Who do You Think Megyn Kelly Supports for President?

Megyn Kelly seems to be taking this US Weekly cover story on Sarah Palin awfully personally.

I wonder what would cause a straight reporter (not a pundit) from The Cartoon Network Fox News to get so worked up over a tabloid’s perceived bias against a Republican candidate. One thing’s for sure: Fox is absolutely not biased and it does not pander to its “conservative viewer base.”  Not at all.

Now I’ll go back to searching for videos of Kelly berating her colleague, fellow non-pundit Steve Doocy, for inaccurately reporting the “huge” news that Barack Obama was raised a Muslim.

I’ll give Allah this, though, Kelly pwned that poor sap.

Mike Murphy + Peggy Noonan + Open Mic = Schadenfreude

Turn up your speakers and be entertained as prominent Republicans admit privately that Palin’s selection is “gimmicky”  “political bullshit” and that “it’s over.”  

Tomorrow the Media Will Love Sarah Palin

Yesterday, I said that a pro-Sarah Palin backlash was on its way:  

Sarah Palin is not Dan Quayle.  She can put a sentence together and can get through a speech.  She may sound like the girl making Blizzards at the Anchorage Dairy Queen, but she is not without rhetorical skills.  And now that her family has come under such close scrutiny, expect her to hit back hard in her acceptance speech at the RNC. 

It’s a cliché, but expectations have been set low for Palin.  When she correctly pronounces “Waziristan” and doesn’t look like a wax figure (see, e.g.,  ) the pundits will go wild.  

Tomorrow, the reevaluation of Sarah Palin will begin.   Here’s the standard by which she’ll be judged:

She’ll exceed those expectations if only because she’s capable of reading a teleprompter:

She probably won’t have the bridge-and-tunnel hair tonight, but she’ll look strong and self-assured. 

Mitigating tonight’s “success” may be the fact that she still hasn’t given an interview.  It’s possible that the press will pound on that — at least for a little bit  — while they gush all over Palin’s masterfully delivered address.  

Of course, at the end of the day, this election isn’t about Sarah Palin.  It’s about John McCain’s intention to model his presidency after George Bush’s.   And while it’s fun to see the Republicans suffer for this monumentally poor selection, it will be even more satisfying to watch the Democrats unrelentingly remind voters that John McCain has aspired to be and has become a 90% clone of George Bush.   

UPDATE:

Did I say tomorrow? Make that tonight.

Joe Klein:

Palin established herself as a major-league performer, a very effective messenger for the perennial Republican themes of low taxes and strong defense. And a new theme–government reform–that changes the terrain of the election and will have to be forcefully countered by the Democrats. Obama will have to be every bit as sharp–and down to earth–as he was in his speech last week as this goes forward.

Maybe it won’t help them win. Maybe it will turn out to have been too negative and sarcastic for the current public mood, especially coming after Giuliani. But two things are clear after Sarah Palin made her do-or-die debut before 20-plus million people tonight. She is amazingly self-confident. And she knows how to nail a speech.

Michael Crowley:

Focus Group: Palin Was (Alarmingly) Strong Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing–few if any would ever vote for McCain–but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked. 

I completely misjudged how negative she would be. Her lines about Obama were brutally cutting and possibly over the top in places. But she’s a far better messenger than an angry white man.

Chuck Todd (on MSNBC):

Conservatives have found their Obama. . . She may be their future.

Jonathan Martin:

Let there be no doubt

Sarah Palin is ready for prime time and has this crowd in an absolute frenzy.

David Gergen:

Palin Delivers

An Ad Obama Ought to Run: Updated

On August 29th, I posted this:

John McCain’s response to everything is to point out that he was a POW.  When defending himself for not being able to remember how many houses he owns, McCain said that there was a time in his life when he didn’t have any homes, didn’t have a table and didn’t have a chair.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26399647

That, of course, was nowhere near the point.  The point was that he was either too old to remember how many properties he owns or that he’s too rich and out of touch to understand the lives of ordinary people. 

Engaging in a debate with someone with absolute moral authority is a tough one, but the Democrats have to do it to win.  Here’s the ad they ought to run.

A former POW or soldier wounded in battle should say the following into the camera:

Senator McCain, you served this country honorably and well.

Nobody can ever give you back those five and a half years you spent as a POW.

But you are wrong on the issues. You’ve voted with George Bush 90% of the time. You think Americans are better off than they were eight years ago. You think the economy is going strong, which would be consistent with your admission that you don’t know that much about economics. You want to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years.

We’re ready for change and that’s just not something you can deliver. For your service and your suffering, our country owes you a debt it can never repay. But it doesn’t owe you the presidency.

Today, the Brave New Foundation and Robert Greenwald released something those lines and it’s very good:

I still think a direct challenge to the basic premise of McCain’s campaign by a former POW– the idea that we owe him our votes because of his service — would be even more powerful.

How to Make a Reporter Heel

Yesterday, Bill Bennett tore into CNN reporter Kyra Phillips for what he thought was an unfair bit of reporting on Sarah Palin live from Alaska.  It made for an uncomfortable moment.  Here’s the video.

No video yet, but tonight, as the Republican convention really gets underway, Philips did another remote from Juneau.  This time, though, her “report” was a two minute gush all over Sarah Palin.  Her hard-hitting investigation has apparently revealed that

No matter what your politics are, Wolf, she’s a fascinating woman.  That’s pretty much the feeling here in Alaska. She represents change to everybody here. I hear a lot of comparisons — she’s the Barack Obama of the Republican party. . . She’s young, she’s charismatic, people love her here. . .  We can’t lose sight of the good things she’s done for this state. . . I wish I could have a chance to sit down with her, have a beer with her, go fishing with her.

As if to acknowledge that she was too snakebit today to do any actual reporting on Sarah Palin, she wrapped by giggling nervously and saying, “don’t tell my friend Bill Bennett,” who was, of course, sitting on the panel.

New Obama Ad: “Same”

Well done and on point: McCain=Bush.

The Coming Palin Backlash

It’s been fun beating up on John McCain for picking Sarah Palin as his running mate.  As any number of writers, pundits, bloggers, and I have pointed out, she’s uniquely unqualified to be vice president or president.  McCain’s decision to put her on the ticket and potentially a heartbeat away from the presidency is unforgivably irresponsible. 

The national spotlight is a tough place to be.  Speculation about her fifth child’s parentage and her seventeen year old daughter’s private life dominated the news cycle. 

Sarah Palin is not Dan Quayle.  She can put a sentence together and can get through a speech.  She may sound like the girl making Blizzards at the Anchorage Dairy Queen, but she is not without rhetorical skills.  And now that her family has come under such close scrutiny, expect her to hit back hard in her acceptance speech at the RNC. 

I fully expect her to say the following to a rousing ovation from the Republican delegates:

“I’ve got a wonderful husband who loves me, and five beautiful children.  My oldest son is about to deploy to Iraq.  I’ve got a daughter in high school.  My youngest son has special needs.  Todd and I love them all equally and would do anything for them. 

The Democrat [sic] Party and their allies in the media and on the Internet have savagely attacked my children and delved into their private lives.  So let me make this as clear as I possibly can: my family isn’t running for vice president, I am. Criticize me all you want.  But when you attack my family, you’ve gone too far and I won’t stand for it.” 

The media will talk about how tough she is and how underestimated she was.  They’ll praise her ability to give a speech and hit back hard at her critics.  She’ll be the new Hillary — underestimated at first, but smart and formidable.

Of course, she still won’t have given a post-selection interview.  She will not have answered any questions about her actual qualifications, philosophy, or knowledge of the world.  And she will still be entirely unqualified for the presidency.  But she and John McCain will get a lift from her acceptance speech, which the media will praise as tough and evidence of her readiness to be on the national stage.

Expect to see the speech — especially “you’ve gone too far and I won’t stand for it” — in McCain ads.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann: New Feminist

Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is against a lot of things.  She opposes legislation to strengthen women’s’ rights in the workplace, wants to outlaw abortion, voted no on more funding for schools, and voted no — twice — on SCHIP, which would have provided health insurance to two to four million children.  One of her biggest boosters is Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist crusader. 

So it was rather strange to see Bachmann take up for women on Larry King last night, where she appeared on a panel with James Carville.

Carville argued that Sarah Palin was unqualified to be either vice president or president.  He made no mention of her gender and in no way suggested that Palin’s sex had anything to do with her qualifications or obvious lack of them. 

Bachmann responded that women would find Carville’s argument “demeaning”.   Really?

Isn’t it actually demeaning to women, women’s rights, and the equal rights movement to cry sexism where none exists?  Doesn’t it demean women for Michele Bachmann to use the suffering of actual victims of sexism — women for whom she has previously had no sympathy — solely to escape an argument she can’t win? 

I agree with Jed.  Round one to Carville. 

Incidentially, Bachmann only decided to run for Congress after God told her to.  She’s a fool….a fool for Christ, that is.

Oh and remember Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman living in a persistent vegitative state? Bachmann, a non-doctor who lives in Minnesota diagnosed her as “healthy.”

Stammering, Dumbfounded McCain Spokesman Can’t Figure Out How to Answer Palin Questions

Tucker Bounds, McCain spokesman, to John McCain*:

‘I have good news and I have bad news. 

The good news is that we’re going to stop making jackasses out of ourselves by saying that Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is right next to Russia. 

The bad news is that we’re not yet sure exactly what we’ll say instead.’

*This is obviously not a real conversation.  The video, however, is beautifully real.

UPDATE:

It just keeps getting worse for Tucker.

“[I]n an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, [Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard] said he and Palin play no role in national defense activities, even when they involve the Alaska National Guard. The entire operation is under federal control, and the governor is not briefed on situations.”

UPDATE TWO:

John McCain has pulled out of an interview with Larry King tonight.  TMP links the cancellation to Tucker Bounds’ disastrous appearance with Campbell Brown last night.  Seriously, Senator, it wasn’t Tucker’s fault Sarah Palin isn’t qualified to be vice president.  It’s yours.

The Palin Baby Story: Out of Control

Barack Obama admonishes the netroots:

“How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off-limits.”

Amen. 

Yesterday, I linked to the Kos story claiming that Bristol was the mother of Trig and Palin was covering for her, but for a different purpose (and didn’t address the claim).  I’ve got a post about Bristol Palin’s actual pregnancy up, but that’s to point out that her mother is a hypocrite.  I also noted in that story that I don’t care about the candidates’ or their families sex lives.

I’m new here, but for the record, this is what I wrote last night to a friend who urged me to push the claim that Bristol is the mother of Palin’s youngest son:

I saw it [the Kos story]. I’m sure it’s bullshit.

Now let’s get back to talking about how John McCain is George Bush.

Lindsey Graham Caught Off Guard on Bridge to Nowhere

George Stephanopoulos interviewed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) this morning.  Graham almost immediately trotted out the Republican claim that Sarah Palin bravely opposed the bridge-to-nowhere. 

What Graham genuinely didn’t seem to realize was that she was first in favor of the project (and campaigned in for it) in 2006.  She changed her position only when a national outrage erupted over the bridge’s proposed cost (and a month after John McCain attacked it). 

Stephanopoulos pointed out that Palin was in favor of the bridge and only abandoned her support when the project became a “national joke.”  Graham’s response was stammering and nonsensical: “Well, the point is that she had the courage to say, ‘we’re not going to do it because its not the right signal we want to send to everybody else from Alaska.'”  Actually, the point is that she didn’t to do what you just tried to give her credit for. 

Seriously, do these people know a single thing about Sarah Palin’s record? Country first!

Here’s the Graham/ Stephanopoulos video:

Ads Obama Ought to Run in South Florida Right Now

Florida has been trending red since 2000.  (You may recall that Bush v. Gore was something of a squeaker that year.)  Since then, Republicans have more or less gained the upper hand — but it’s still within reach. 

Cubans and Jews are critical Flordia voting blocs.  As USA Today reported just a month ago

Jewish voters, traditionally Democratic, also favor Obama but not currently by as large a margin as they did John Kerry in 2004. As a result, Jewish voters are “definitely” a target audience for McCain, says Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer. To that end, McCain’s campaign has frequently deployed Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who will campaign in the state next week. “He’s not only a leader, he’s a Jewish leader and they follow what he has to say,” Greer says.

So there is ground to be made up there.  Doing so is far easier today than it was yesterday.

See, Sarah Palin supported Pat Buchanan for president in 1999/2000.  This is from a ’99 AP piece, helpfully discovered by Christopher Hayes:

Pat Buchanan brought his conservative message of a smaller government and an America First foreign policy to Fairbanks and Wasilla on Friday as he continued a campaign swing through Alaska. Buchanan’s strong message championing states rights resonated with the roughly 85 people gathered for an Interior Republican luncheon in Fairbanks. … Among those sporting Buchanan buttons were Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin and state Sen. Jerry Ward, R-Anchorage.

Buchanan’s bigotry, particularly his anti-Semitism, has been evident for years — many years before he ran for president in 1999/2000. 

While she is still being defined, Obama needs to get an ad on radio and television in south Florida pointing out that in 1999, when Sarah Palin decided to support Pat Buchanan for President of the United States, he was on record saying things like

• After World War II, Jewish influence over foreign policy became almost an obsession with American leaders.

– A Republic, Not an Empire. P. 336.

• I know the power of the Israeli lobby and the other lobbies, but we need a foreign policy that puts our own country first.

– Meet the Press Interview. September 12, 1999.

and

• Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory.

– McLaughlin Group, June 15, 1990

As the world knew in 1999, Buchanan has also made a career out of defending accused Nazi war criminals.  In 1987, while working for the Reagan Administration, he provided valuable assistance to wanted Nazis who had escaped Europe and were hiding in our country:

”Buchanan is no help,” said one Federal law-enforcement official . . . ”It appears he’s trying to shut down O.S.I.”

He continued his defense of Nazis in hiding once he left government.  He began referring those those who worked for the OSI — people with names like Rosenbaum and Sher — as “hairy-chested Nazi hunters“. 

Buchanan’s animosity toward Jews continues to this day. Most recently, Buchanan wrote a book letting Adolf Hitler off the hook for World War II and placing the blame for it on the Western Allies. 

Israel is in greater danger now than it has been in decades.  Iran is led by a religious fanatic who has made clear his desire to see it destroyed and ethnically cleansed of Jews.  Iranian proxy Hezbollah plans to attack Jews worldwide. 

Pat Buchanan has made a career out of antagonizing victims of Nazism and sympathizing with those who want to destroy Israel.  Why is that okay with Sarah Palin?  What is it about Buchanan’s views that led her to believe he ought to be president?  Are these the kinds of questions you want to have to ask about someone who could be a heartbeat away from the presidency in less than five months?

Good for Fox News

They say it’s a mouthpiece for the RNC, but I have to give Fox News credit.  Immediately following the McCain-Palin event at which she was announced as his running mate, Fox got an extended reaction directly from the campaign of John McCain.

UPDATE…here’s the video:

Me in the Newspaper

Sometimes I write stuff for the paper.  Here’s some of it.

Barack Obama Hates Hayseeds

Fox News wants you to know that Barack Obama (a dazzling urbanite if Fox has ever seen one) doesn’t like small town America.

Me on the TV

Occasionally, I do some legal analysis on TV.  Here‘s a link to video from one such occasion.

Me on the Radio

Before law school, I was in the media.  I worked in radio and TV in various markets around the country and also for NBC News. 

As it says right there in the “About” section, these days I do some radio (and TV for that matter).  Among my favorite radio gigs was substitute hosting for my friend, talk show host Michael Berry.  Last year, I sat in for him when he was doing morning drive on 950 KPRC here in Houston.  

Why was it one of my favorite experiences?  Because I was fired after one day for supporting the legalization of gay marriage.  If you’d like to listen, here’s the show: hour one, hour two, hour three.   Janice and I locked the doors when I got home and waited for the front yard to light up from the burning crosses.

More recently, I’ve been sitting in for my friend Leo Gold who hosts the New Capital Show on KPFT, 90.1, also in Houston.   Most recently, I did a show on the Democratic revival in Texas, which you can listen to here.  Before that, at Leo’s request, I did a show on recycling, about which I know virtually nothing.  Here is that catastrophe.

The possibility exists that I’ll get a more regular job hosting.  Of course, I’ll update as that develops.