Palin: Real life or parody?
Courtesy of CBS News
Pop quiz:
Below, you’ll find transcripts from two television interviews that aired last week. One comes from the interview of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, by “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric. The other is from the opening sketch of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” with Tina Fey playing Palin and Amy Poehler playing Couric.
Can you tell which is which?
TRANSCRIPT ONE
Question: Senator McCain attempted to shut down his political campaign this week in order to deal with the economic crisis. What’s your opinion of this potential $700 billion bailout?
Answer: Like every American I’m speaking with, we are ill about this. We’re saying, “Hey, why bail out Fannie and Freddie and not me?” But ultimately, what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help, um, it’s gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddie back on the right track and, so, health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending - because Barack Obama [licks finger, holds it up to the wind], you know - has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. Also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants; that’s going to help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know, also.
TRANSCRIPT TWO
Question: Why isn’t it better, Gov. Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
Answer: That’s why I say like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, um, helping the, oh it’s gotta be all about job creation, too. Shoring up the economy and, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade. We have got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs being in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
NBC photo by Dana Edelson
I EXPECT Sarah Palin’s debate performance on Thursday to exceed my expectations. In this view, I am joined, sort of, by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “There’s nothing like being able to create low expectations,” he told Matt Lauer on Monday’s “Today” program, “and that’s certainly been done for her.”
“. . . been done for her”? Romney and a few others have suggested that Palin’s incoherent ramblings in unscripted situations are the fault of overprotective handlers who have pushed her to (you should excuse the expression) cling to her briefing points. I’m not buying it.
Scads of professionally coached politicians and corporate executives manage to stick to their stories without sounding like “something rendered from the Finnish by Google Translate,” as The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg described parts of Palin’s interview with Couric.
Whatever the explanations for her babbling, surely overprotective handling isn’t one of them. Isn’t the campaign’s fear of babble why Palin got protective handlers and limited exposure to unscripted moments in the first place?
In a column a couple of weeks ago, I decried the flood of attention to Palin gushing from my media colleagues. However interesting her story and background might be, I wrote, she’s running for vice president, not president.
As such, the only really relevant question is: If John McCain were elected president and were unable to perform his duties, would voters feel comfortable with Palin becoming president? I wouldn’t be comfortable at all, I acknowledged, but that would not determine my vote for president.
Some readers criticized me for being simplistic, hardly the first time I’ve heard that. My approach might be defensible in ordinary circumstances, they argued, but McCain’s age - 72 - increased the odds that Palin could wind up president.
I did a little research and wasn’t persuaded that McCain being a 72-year-old man mattered all that much. What did concern me, though, is that McCain is a 72-year-old man who has had melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer. Four times: once in 1993, twice in 2000 and once in 2002.
That, I think, raises the stakes of Palin’s candidacy and, thus, the importance of her performance in Thursday’s debate here. On the campaign trail, she has delivered prepared variations on her punchy convention acceptance speech to receptive crowds of supporters. But when severed from her scripts, as she was most dramatically in last week’s issue-oriented interview with Couric, Palin can become incomprehensible. She certainly does not come across as knowledgeable, capable or even marginally competent enough to be president.
I expect nothing from Palin tomorrow night and assume she will do better than that. How could she not - especially in the presence of her opponent, Joe Biden, whom she might well batter with the kind of lively invective she slings at rallies.
Comedians target politicians because politicians are a 100-percent-reliable source of raw material for mockery: “I was against regulations before I was in favor of them,” a spot-on parody of John McCain might read.
But it’s fairly rare for politicians to take the extra step of providing the scripts for the bits that expose themselves as ridiculous. In this, Sarah Palin has no contemporary equal.
I leave you, then, with the transcript of another exchange. Palin and Couric? Poehler and Fey? You’re on your own:
Question: On foreign policy, I want to give you one more chance to explain your claim that you have foreign policy experience based on Alaska’s proximity to Russia. What did you mean by that?
Answer: Well, Alaska and Russia are separated by a narrow maritime border. You’ve got Alaska here [gestures with hands], and this right here’s water, and then that up there’s Russia. So we keep an eye on them.
Question: And how do you do that exactly?
Answer: Every morning when Alaskans wake up, one of the first things they do is look outside to see if there are any Russians hanging around. If there are, you gotta go up to them and ask, “What’re you doing here?” And if they can give you a good reason - if they can’t, then it’s our responsibility to say, you know, “Shoo! Get back over there.”
Eric Mink was the commentary editor and an oped columnist for the Post-Dispatch from 2003 until January 2009. Before that, he was television critic at the New York Daily News and at the Post-Dispatch. During the 1980s and '90s, he also was a morning show regular on the various St. Louis radio stations that employed J.C. Corcoran. Mink was born in St. Louis in the previous century and hopes subsequent generations aren't too ticked off about it. He is proud to be a member of the University City High School Hall of Fame and makes no apologies for being what is known in the pet trade as "a cat person." 
If any of you republican pro-McCain/Palinites are beginning to worry, don’t forget that Richard Nixon won the presidency with Spiro Agnew for a running mate with his “nattering nabobs of negativeism” and other such phrases. Of course, the republicans had to smear him to get him to resign when it appeared certain that Mr. Nixon would be impeached for his criminal activities during the Watergate affair. Which in turn made way for Jerry Ford to be the only president in our history not to be elected president or vice-president.
Eric, you are reminding right now of Rush Limbaugh! I hate Rush’s recent EIB abuse of Joe Biden, but I don’t like this Post-Dispatch treatment of Sarah Palin much better.
It’s funny to see the PD try to tear her down. She knows more about geography than Hussein who thinks we have 57 states. In his interview with George Sepanolipis (sp) he proclaimed his Muslim faith. He had to be reminded he was a Christian…at lest for that week. Got it?
When she said she could see Russia from her house, that was a tongue in cheek comment. She lives on Lucille Lake and has a view of the lake and Mountains. For the ignorant, Russia is over 500 miles away and you can see Russia from the west end of the Aleutians. You can walk across in the winter.
I predict that Biden will have a very long night if Sarah performs like she has in debates in the past. If she doesn’t go for the jugular in her first bite, it will be surprising to me. If she doesn’t, she will barely win, and be the first woman elected President 4 years down the road, after
Hussein tries to make this a communist country.
Real life or parody? Mr Obama, what is your solution to the oil crisis. “Go get a gauge and inflate your tires.”
OH MY GOD!!! Give the Palin editorials a rest already!!! She is the focus of 3 out of the last 5. I (and many others) are sick of it. Is there a possibility she may become president because of McCain’s age and health? Yes. But there is probably a greater chance Biden would become president if Obama is elected. Let’s see a bunch of equally critical editorials of Biden so you can at least pretend you are somewhat unbiased.
Inevitably, when an entertainment critic is pressed into duty as OPED Page Editor abd political columnist, the first question asked is, “Did he marry into the family that runs the paper?”
It certainly is not for his ability to recognize parody. He sees humor in Sarah Palin’s answers to one of the trio of mainstream media nightly newsreaders. I see parody in their fool’s errand, all of them following Obama around the Middle East and Europe, goggle eyed with tongues lolling, expecting world shaking events but finding only courteous reception from inconsequential political leaders to report.
Isn’t John Murtha, the Democrats foremost authority on military matters in and out of Congress a parody? Why else would he propose a “Quick strike force for Iraq” be posted in Okinawa, half way around the world?
Isn’t Joe Biden a parody, forcefully explaining FDR’s role in 1929, going on TV to calm the nation 4 years before he was inaugurated President and 10 years before TV was successfully introduced at the New York World’s Fair?
If an entertainment critic is wrong he has only the wrath of the entertainer to worry about. I urge you to explore the opportunities in a field you are less publicly reviled, more familiar and questionably qualified.
Mr. Mink’s endless patter of juvenile mockery of Governor Palin doesn’t make her look bad - it makes HIM look bad. Anybody who picks up The New Yorker now and then (I’ve subscribed for years) knows that there is nobody who exceeds Mr. Hertzberg in bitter partisanship. That Mink cites him as an authority on Palin is telling.
Under Mr. Mink’s leadership, the Post-Dispatch, once a liberal but fair minded publication, has tripped over itself racing to become as partisan as the New York Times. But there are a few important differences. For one thing, even the Times has William Kristol. Also, Andrew Rosenthal doesn’t regularly pen columns with his name at the top. Finally, of course, there’s the issue of quality: While the Times editorials reach the same destination as those in the Post, they at least make some effort at taking a credible path in arriving there.
The headline for this juvenile piece of “editorial” work is “Palin: Real life or parody?” One might well apply the same question to the Post-Dispatch editorial page under the leadership of Mr. Mink. His childish musings and scorched earth partisanship might serve him well in his social circles, but they have alienated a great many people who were once paying subscribers to the Post-Dispatch.
McCain threw the GOP’s chances in this election away with his shockingly irresponsible choice of Palin for VP. He did it in one of his many recent bouts of impetuous spite, because the conservative wing of his party refused to allow him his choice of liberal independent best buddy Joe Lieberman. Remember the punk kid in your neighborhood who took his ball and went home when he didn’t get his way? John McCain apparently approved of that kid’s message.
I fondly remember Spiro Agnew. I had a Sprio Agnew watch and a waste basket that had all his famous remarks printed on the side. If liberals demonize Palin in the same way, think of the boost to our economy from the sales of all the novelty items. Seriously, I hope she wins for the same reason 95% of blacks hope Obama wins. They want a black President. I really understand that and as long as they are honest about it and not try to act like he’s got any real experience to be president, I’m fine with that position. I want her to win because I would like to see an average person elected, someone who isn’t rich, or part of the Ivy League elite, someone who didn’t inherit their position. So she doesn’t have the same level of articulation of someone who had an Ivy League education. She speaks like 99% of the population. You don’t have to be part of the Washington problem to be part of the Washington solution.
Without being reined in, both candidates are given to bouts of rambling rhetoric. This is the only hope the Palenites have of emerging unscathed. However, Sen. Biden has had more experience disciplining himself to effective (sometimes humorously) concise responses. I see the Republicans losing another five points in the polls tomorrow night.