Posted on 07/05/2009 1:15:09 PM PDT by steve-b
Eight days before the election, I spent 20 minutes alone with Sarah Palin on her campaign bus between rallies in Leesburg, Va., and Fredericksburg, George Washington's childhood home.
Our encounter brought to mind a crusty Texas editor's description of politicians who didn't know what they didn't know: Delusions of adequacy.
By then, John McCain's handlers were so spooked by the disastrous Katie Couric interview they'd hermetically sealed his running mate from media interrogators. But Tucker Eskew, the savvy Republican operative running her road show, graciously offered some "face time" - if our conversation was off the record.
Reluctantly, I took the deal. It would be my only chance for sizing up a candidate who wouldn't be the next vice president but who might leverage her newfound celebrity as a springboard to national office later on. So I can't talk about what she said.
I can report the Alaska governor was engaging, authentic, gracious and appealing. There was a refreshing lack of pretense to her, all too rare a commodity in Washington political salons.
Except for energy, however, her grasp of issues was woefully superficial. She was easily the most inarticulate veep candidate I've interviewed while covering 11 presidential campaigns.
I found myself recalling the withering assessment of one of McCain's top counselors when I challenged her foreign policy credentials the day she was unveiled.
"He's gambling he's going to live long enough to train her on foreign policy and national security," he'd blurted out.
Now, the conventional Republican wisdom says she's destroyed her political aspirations by resigning 16 months before her term in Juneau is up.
Theoretically, Palin might rehabilitate herself. The experts pronounced Richard Nixon a goner when he lost the California governor's race in 1962, bitterly noting the press wouldn't have him to kick around anymore.
But as Lloyd Bentsen would surely observe, Palin with her paper-thin résumé and intellectual incuriosity is no Dick Nixon.
Palin's cred has actually diminished since the election.
She wasn't ready for the Big Show that wet, wintry morning I met her last October. Yet her defenders are certain she'll make fools of the skeptics in 2012.
Perhaps. But if you believe that, you may be interested in purchasing that Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere.
Unlike BO of course who had such a dazzling resume?
Even is one does not support her, one needs be impressed by the number of hit pieces published about her.
Riiiiiiiiiight! Sarah Palin just increased the USA’s natural gas supply by 8% along with creating REAL jobs and she doesn’t know what she’s doing!
Pfffffffffffffffffffftttt!!!
Can I assume this author believes Barry Hussein has no business in the White House?
Guess he hadn't gotten arouond to interviewing Biden just yet. After reading so many anti Sarah articles all I can say is What---ever.
These folks are so smart, yet they still don’t realize that 0bama won the election?
Geez, the expression “stuck on stupid” never seemed more apt.
And, Obomba's "resume?" I'd say this "JOURNALIST" is a "paper thin" researcher and writer....and that's the complimentary view....
It’s a real hoot watching these bobbleheads talk about Palin’s inexperience as they kneel before their braindead, Marxist “messiah” and kiss his feet everyday. Weird.
ROFLMAO! Guess NOT!!! Who is the dunce who wrote that tripe?
Well...he learned a lot about her “grasp of the issues” in a 20-minute interview, didn’t he?
And she’s inarticulate? That must be from the lib talking points, as the term keeps popping up. I wonder what their definition of inarticulate is. If this writer really thinks Biden, for example, is more articulate than Sarah, he’s simply not paying attention.
Once again, a writer is going out of his way to attack Sarah. If she were not a contender there would be no need for this.
Thank God she has never had to run for office or negotiate a gas pipeline deal and the like, she would fail at that the second she tried she is such an idiot...
Right. Biden was smart enough for VP but not Palin?
The intricacies of foregin policy can be taught, integrity cannot.
I watched Charles Gibson the other day and I marveled at his ability to speak even though he had his lips firmly planted on Obaba’s Ass.
She has ideals. Principles. Something no one sticking it to her apparently has. She wasn’t born with a silver spoon or pedigree. That’s just fine with me.
There is a profound ring to your comment. And I would add common sense to integrity and then consider it covered.
The more I read this crap, the more sure I am that Sarah has done the right thing. How often can you get so many heads to explode all at one time from the lamestream media and even some conservative pundits?
Do believe we have found a candidate that is making some on both sides of the aisle very nervous which shows we have the right person.
They are meeting a champion for smaller government, less taxes, strong defense, and defender of the Constitution from small town America not the elistist areas of the Country. They are choking on the fact that Sarah has so much grassroots support across this Country. Sarah’s support is not phoney like Zero’s, but real people from the Conservative Republican grassroots — same grassroots that took on the GOP establishment and helped elect Dr. Coburn in Oklahoma in 2004.
Her donations will come from people all over the Country that are fed up not like the donations to ZERO from the same people that used a bunch of different names. Sarah needs to report every donation no matter how small and stick it the DemocRATs that she is totally open about donations.
We can win this won against the Dems if we all roll up our sleeves and work to elect her.
First thing everyone has to do is look at the voter rolls in their precinct and get them scrubbed NOW! Every name has to be checked out because it is beginning to look like they registered some as GOP, voted in our primaries illegally and in the general for ZERO which would make sense when some of these areas went to ZERO that should not have gone. Make a list and send a certified letter to the Election Board with the findings and follow-up.
His standing as an elitist follower of the cult of personality is evident in this article. I’d pay it no mind.
I’d rather have a president who doesn’t know who the president of Tajikistan is but thinks America is better than Tajikistan and owes nothing to them OR Azerbaijan.
Up Close.....Larry Sinclair was up close with obambi
Sarah Palin is miles ahead of any democrat, and that is with all her problems. Maybe that is what makes her Leadership style so attractive. She is far from perfect and doesn’t try and deny it by hiding behind new age morals or lack of.
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