Posts Tagged Katie Couric

Palin v. Biden: pre-game analysis

October 2, 2008 at 3:45 pm · Filed under Politics, domestic policy ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Democrats, prepare yourselves: odds are high that Sarah Palin is going to charm America’s pants off tonight.  Why?  Because the campaign has been so pilloried for wrapping her in a protective cocoon, feeding her campaign talking points that, when she spits them back out, they sound not merely like platitudes, but like nonsense. There’s no time to actually learn the points behind the talking, and the campaign has learned that lesson after a week of humiliating Katie Couric coverage.  So the story now goes, they are going to free Sarah Palin.  She’s going to be herself, which is what scared Democrats when she first burst onto the scene a month ago.

Tonight, Sarah Barracuda is going up against the bloviator, as his critics call him.  Joe Biden has been in the Senate for more than 30 years.  He’s polished, articulate (ha, and clean too;o) and very knowledgeable on any policy Gwen Ifill might possibly throw at the candidates tonight.  But people won’t relate to him unless his demeanor and answers come off more blue collar than they do Washingtonian.  He has two famous weaknesses: the sound of his voice (he enjoys it too much), and his lack of an “inappropriate comment” filter.  And because of his heightened awareness of his rep as a gaffe-prone monologist, he could turn in a soft performance, or try bizarre self-deprecation, like saying Hillary Clinton would have been a better pick than him.  Still, Biden’s command of all of the issues of the day is reassuring to a panicky cash and credit-strapped electorate.

For her part, Palin is so well known for a sentence structure to nowhere that she has practically nowhere to go tonight but up.  If she turns in a shaky or poor performance tonight, McCain will have two choices: pack it in, or bring back Reverend Wright with a vengeance that may or may not backfire.  But I digress.

Palin was a small town mayor just 5 years ago, and that helps people to relate to her on a personal level.  Her manner of speaking, when it makes sense, is reassuring in its familiarity, if not its substance.  And, I assume Palin got the Barracuda nickname for a reason.  We’ve already seen on the campaign trail that she’s not afraid to hurl canned attack lines over enemy lines.  A Campaign aide claims that Palin is “in a fighting mood” after the criticism she’s received recently.  So, we can expect her to hammer Obama (may not be necessary  to bother with Biden, just as Biden has been advised to politely ignore Palin and hit McCain) and look and sound “fiesty”.  Amy Poehler nailed it in her last SNL skit (she played Katie Couric) when she asked Tina Fey’s Palin “It seems to me that when cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?”

One of the biggest mistakes Palin keeps making, though, is that it takes her three tries to say, essentially, “I’m not an expert on that, but here’s my gut feeling.”  So, when asked by her press pool of 1, Katie Couric, what other Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with (besides Roe v. Wade), she said this:

Palin: Well, let’s see. There’s, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that’s never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I’m so privileged to serve, wouldn’t be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

She should have said, on the first go, “You know, Katie, I’m not a Supreme Court scholar.  But what I will tell you is that if I should be in the position to nominate anyone to that highest court in this great country, I would be guided by the same principles I stand by on Roe v. Wade.  I’m going to want to see judges who will uphold states’ rights, and stick to the constitution.”  Had she admitted up front to Couric that she simply didn’t have a court case to name, she might have spared herself (and us) the agony.

Joe Biden, who gets so little attention these days, deserves credit for a polished interview with Katie “She’s Everywhere” Couric this week.  Compare Couric’s Q and A on Roe v. Wade with each of them.  Biden handles it delicately, but he’s very articulate (without being too high-minded) and resolutely invokes the critical principle behind the Court’s decision: the right to privacy.  When Couric asks Palin about if she believes in the right to privacy, on which Couric noted that ruling turned, you get the sense she didn’t already know, and didn’t connect the dots.  Instead, she just sort of kept reaching for home base . . . the talking point on states’ rights.

If Palin manages to get through this debate gaffe-free, it won’t be enough to win back the momentum for the McCain ticket.  The Couric interviews irreparably shook people’s confidence in Palin.  But this debate could at least stop the bleeding.

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Palin brings her dad to Couric rematch

September 30, 2008 at 3:18 pm · Filed under Politics, foreign affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Last week I stated with utter certainty that, given the horrible week the Republican ticket had over at the CBS network, McCain and Palin would surely never take another question from Katie Couric.  I was wrong.  Over the weekend, Sarah Palin took a question from a voter on the subject of Pakistan, gave the wrong answer (she sounded more like Barack Obama than John McCain), and it landed both her and McCain back in the studio with Katie Couric.

McCain has been pounding Barack Obama for publicly stating his willingness to launch a surgical strike – without the sign off from the Pakistani government – against high value Al Qaida targets operating in Pakistan if he gets actionable intelligence.  Pakistan is an incredibly difficult nut to crack.  The more we cozy up to its government, the more the people seem to hate us.  And yet, it is the government that (we hope) maintains control over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.  But the new Pakistani President, Ali Azif Zardari, has no more popular mandate to maintain his government’s stability, nor any more handle on extremist groups in the mountainous region bordering Afghanistan, than did Musharraf.  So the place is a tinderbox.  Maybe refraining from endorsing particular tactics is a good idea, but if the roles were reversed, and it was Obama who thought we should hold our cards closer to our vest, and it was McCain giving voters the kind of tough talk they clamor for, you can be sure that McCain would be bludgeoning Obama with his pansy tactical secrecy bit.  Recall, from Friday night’s debate:

“He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan,” McCain said of Obama. “Now, you don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”

“And I guarantee you I would not publicly state that I’m going to attack them,” McCain added.

Obama responded that “nobody talked about attacking Pakistan,” saying his speech last year on Pakistan endorsed the idea that “if the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out.”

“This is not an easy situation. You’ve got cross-border attacks against U.S. troops,” Obama added. “And we’ve got a choice. We could allow our troops to just be on the defensive and absorb those blows again and again and again, if Pakistan is unwilling to cooperate, or we have to start making some decisions.”

So, at an unscheduled stop in Philadelphia (for cheesesteaks of course) over the weekend, a customer in the shop asked Palin about how to deal with attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan by terrorists operating in Pakistan.  He asked her whether she would support cross border raids into Pakistan, and she said: “If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should.”

When McCain and Palin returned to CBS last night, Katie Couric asked both of them about Governor Palin’s response to that voter, as it seemed to contradict McCain’s insistence on not talking about such tactics in public.

COURIC: Is that something you shouldn’t say out loud, Sen. McCain?

McCAIN: Of course not. But, look, I understand this day and age “gotcha” journalism. Is that a pizza place? In a conversation with someone who you didn’t hear … the question very well, you don’t know the context of the conversation. Grab a phrase. Gov. Palin and I agree that you don’t announce that you’re going to attack another country.

COURIC: Are you sorry you said it …

McCAIN: …And the fact …

COURIC: Governor?

McCAIN: Wait a minute. Before you say, “is she sorry she said it,” this was a “gotcha” sound bite that, look …

COURIC: It wasn’t a “gotcha.” She was talking to a voter.

McCAIN: No, she was in a conversation with a group of people and talking back and forth.

What is remarkable about this clip is not the substance of the discussion.  It’s the fact that John McCain willingly sat with Sarah Palin for a Katie Couric rematch.  Why in God’s name would they do that?  The interview manages to make Palin look even more infantile – for bringing her dad with her to the interview  – than she already does.  McCain goes so far as to even answer the question for Palin, whose body language throughout the exchange was very telling.  The back and forth really makes McCain look like a hair-splitting grumpy old man who now equates a voter asking a question of his vice president with the media playing “gotcha” journalism.  Smells a lot more like gotcha politics to me.

Want more?  The internet is buzzing in anticipation for the other footage CBS has ready to release this week – Q and As with Sarah Palin and then also with Joe Biden.

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And that’s why we don’t talk to reporters

September 26, 2008 at 1:33 am · Filed under Politics, foreign affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sarah Palin’s disastrous interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric proved Campbell Brown quite wrong. McCain isn’t shielding Palin from press scrutiny because she is a woman; he is shielding her from press scrutiny because she handles it no better than he does.  Clive Crook at the Financial Times had this to say:

Was this the same Palin who gave the convention speech – or even the less-than-stunning Palin of the Charles Gibson interview? She was simply awful. In response to straightforward questions, she was scared, rambling, incoherent, and at times completely unintelligible. She looked stupid. She gave her critics everything they could have wished.

The two part interview revealed several points of weakness:

1. Palin had no answer to Couric’s questions about revelations that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis’ firm (in which he continues to hold an interest, pointed out Couric) has continued to receive $15,000/month payments from Freddie Mac until last month.  When Couric pressed on whether Davis’ interest in the firm isn’t a clear conflict of interest, Palin was literally at a loss for words.

2. When asked by Couric for a specific example of how John McCain had pushed for more adequate regulation of Wall Street, Palin stumbled, and when Couric pressed the point for a third time, Palin had to admit she couldn’t think of an example, but would “try to find one and bring it to ya.”


3. Couric gave the governor another shot to frame her foreign policy credentials vis a vis Russia.  Palin was wobbly, trying to finish out a sentence describing a maritime border with Russia and wandered into talking about the land border with Canada.  As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do you think they go?”  And it gets worse, you can view it below, in part two of the interview.


4. Couric asked Palin her opinion about the bailout package under negotiation in Congress this week, and whether the country could face another Great Depression if something isn’t passed. Rather than sounding a reassuring and confident note, Palin took the bait, and said that yes, we could be headed for one.  Worse, though is that she was completely incoherent – despite repeatedly looking down toward, presumably, her notes, when defining why a bailout needs to be passed.  I would paste the text here but CBS didn’t provide it; you have to watch the clip.  Her answer begins at 2:20 minutes in the Part II interview.  Then between 4:00 and 4:45 minutes she seems unable to decide whether homebuyers should bear any responsbility for home foreclosures.

5. Katie Couric asked Palin about when U.S. efforts to promote democracy backfire, such as when Hamas won control of the Palestinian government several years ago.  Palin did not seem to understand the question, and just rambled on about how important it is to promote those who seek democracy.   Not surprisingly, her diplomatic approach to Israel and Iran comes down to not secondguessing “the good guys” in “their fight” against “the bad guys.”  Time to take cover, folks.

5. Palin’s fumbles on the economic crisis led John McCain to skip a taping with David Letterman and sit down with Katie Couric, in which he avoided referring to a Great Depression but rather warned of consequences “of the utmost seriousness” if action is not taken.  Then, David Letterman skewered McCain for begging off the show to rush back to Washington, and showed live tape of McCain getting powdered for the Couric interview.

I think it’s clear that even if John McCain and Sarah Palin take any more questions from the press over the next forty days, they surely won’t take any more of them from Katie Couric.
But wait- I left out one other important video that the unholy media dug up this week.  A visiting pastor visits Palin’s church (during her gubernatorial campaign) and prays against witchcraft, and for, among other things, that God should take over the media, our schools, the financial system, our government and politics. He prays for her success, and that church members will involve themselves in her campaign.

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That’s it; I’m through blogging about Sarah Palin

September 25, 2008 at 4:39 pm · Filed under Politics, foreign affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ok, maybe not.  But I am beginning to actually feel for Governor Palin.  Something in the way Garrison Keillor just ripped the bandaid off – courageously, I might add – in his searing commentary earlier this week has affected me.  Keillor admonished Senator McCain for “exploiting a symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn’t funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain has made a fool of her.”

It’s a sort of moral dilemma.  If Palin is in over her head, do you just set down the gloves and let this thing play out?  Do I really need to say anything when these are the snippets we have to work with?

“I am honored to meet you,” Ms. Palin said [upon meeting the new Pakistani President, Ali Asif Zardari.]

“You are even more gorgeous than you are on the (inaudible),” Mr. Zardari said.

“You are so nice,” Ms. Palin replied. “Thank you.”

“Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” Mr. Zardari continued. At which point an aide told the two to shake hands.

“I’m supposed to pose again,” Ms. Palin said.

“If he’s insisting,” Mr. Zardari said, “I might hug.”

This one:

Earlier Wednesday, Ms. Palin had met with Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, and other Iraqi officials.

As the meeting began, Ms. Palin made small talk with Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, the first lady of Iraq. “Plenty to do here, isn’t there?” Ms. Palin remarked, presumably about New York. “Plenty to see.”

With a bit of nationalist pride, or perhaps the irritation of a spouse not thrilled about being dragged along on a business trip, the first lady replied, “I have plenty to do at home, also.”

Or this one:

COURIC: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

PALIN: He’s also known as the maverick, though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about — the need to reform government.

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some, and I’ll bring them to you.

This one, which you have surely heard over and over again:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us.  Do you agree with that?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

The Bush administration made countless false and exaggerated claims to go into Iraq, but they never claimed there was an imminent attack.  And, Saddam Hussein was many ugly things, but he was not an ally to Islamic extremists.

And now this from Laura Bush, who is a pretty straight shooter, to her credit:

In an interview on Wednesday with CNN, the first lady, Laura Bush, was asked whether Ms. Palin had enough foreign policy experience. “Of course she doesn’t have that,” Mrs. Bush said.

“You know, that’s not been her role,” she said. “But I think she is a very quick study, and fortunately John McCain does have that sort of experience.”

If Sarah Palin, self-described hockey mom with real-life family crises just like the rest of us, had the national and international experience of Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice (neither of whom I am wild about), well, she’d be a force to be reckoned with.  But Garrison Keillor is right: it is painfully obvious that Palin is out of her league.  And while she deserves a certain amount of our respect as would any other working mother (or father) in this world, I was put off that she “didn’t blink” at the VP offer from John McCain.  If she isn’t informed enough to know she isn’t informed enough to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, it either takes some hubris, or else a lack of intelligence and critical thinking.  Being a quick study does not bestow sound judgment.

I appreciate the fact that many Americans, especially women, like being able to relate to this candidate.  She seems like many of us.  But ask yourself, do you have what it takes to be president?  Does your neighbor?

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Will they, or won’t they debate?

September 25, 2008 at 2:33 pm · Filed under Economy, Politics, domestic policy, foreign affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday, John McCain suddenly announced he would be suspending his campaign, and returning to Washington to help broker agreement on the rescue/bailout package that congressional leaders and Secretary Paulson have been negotiating.  He also called to cancel tomorrow night’s debate.

David Letterman was miffed that McCain blew off a scheduled appearance on his show last night, in his “race to the airport,” but sat for an interview with Katie Couric instead.  So, Letterman rolled live footage of McCain getting his face powdered before the interview.  “Hey, I’ve got a question for you,” Letterman yelled at the onscreen image of McCain.  “Need a ride to the airport?!”

For his part, Barack Obama wasn’t having any of it.

“With respect to the debates, it’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once . . .”

“I think there’s no reason why we can’t be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand … So in my mind, actually, it’s more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy.”

President Bush went on the air last night to calm us all, and to explain why we won’t be able to get a car, home or school loan next year, even with a great credit record, if we don’t act now to stabilize our capital markets.  He’s right, actually.  But George Bush isn’t exactly someone most Americans feel confident in.

We are looking to the guy who, just over a month, is going to inherit this mess.  So, as Obama said, there is no better time to hold a nationally televised debate than now.

Senator Lindsey Graham, McCain’s debate negotiations pointman, had this to say yesterday: “We need a solution on this crisis more than we need a foreign policy debate.”  Oh, really?  I wonder what Mr. Graham had to say today, after Pakistani and American troops exchanged fire — with eachother — and Pakistan’s Prime Minister had this to say:

“We will not tolerate any act against our sovereignty and integrity in the name of the war against terrorism,” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, told reporters on Wednesday. “We are fighting extremism and terror not for any other country, but our own country.”

And that’s not all.  Terrorist violence in Pakistan has been escalating,  and there are now reports that a “grim” new National Intelligence Estimate on the situation in Afghanistan is ready, but that it won’t be released until after the election.  Iran’s nuclear development activities aren’t on hold while Washington works to rescue Wall Street.  The North Korea deal still hangs precariously on the cliff of failure.  A new Israeli Prime Minister may or may not be able to hold a coalition government together to continue peace talks with the Palestinians, and with the Syrians.  Hugo Chavez gallivants off to see his new BFFs in Moscow every other month.  But hey, no biggie.  All that stuff can wait.

I agree with Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (never one to mince words) that McCain’s announcement was “the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of football or Marys.”  The negotiations include Senate and House leadership and the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committes.  John McCain will not be in the room at 10:00am this morning when the negotiators hammer out their remaining differences.  In fact, the negotiators will have to take a break from the actual business of negotiating to troop over to the White House and have a meaningless photo op with the President.  The president has little juice left for effective arm-twisting, and whatever lines in the sand he wants to express, are obviously represented for him by Hank Paulson.  The only thing that meeting could be good for is if Congressional leaders and Paulson have reached an agreement by the time they all arrive at the White House, and President Bush announces the deal when the “meeting” wraps.

At this stage, the arms that still need twisting are those members who don’t want the government, and thus the taxpayers, to have to front this money for Wall Street.  They are understandably angry, but they need to realize that things will only get far worse if we don’t act to stabilize the markets.  So the parameters really are around how much money truly needs to be fronted (Paulson is erring on the side of as much as he can have the authority to move around), what measures will be taken to penalize those at fault (limiting CEO pay, for example), what measures can be put in place to increase the likelihood and the amount of profit the taxpayer, and not the bailed out companies, will get later for fronting the money now, and, is there anything Congress can do to prevent more homes from being foreclosed (I have read about a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reset mortgage terms, but I doubt that would fly).

If John McCain wants to be useful, he should march over to Jeb Henslaring’s (R-TX) office and twist his arm.  “Jeb, I don’t like this anymore than you do,” he should say.  “But I need the caucus with me on this one.  I don’t want to be responsible for the deal failing, and Reid and Pelosi are threatening not to move if the GOP sits back on this one.  It sure would be nice to all buck the president, vote no and let the Democrats pass a socialist government takeover of Wall Street, but Harry and Nancy aren’t going for it.  So, I’ve come back to save the deal, right?  Seriously, I need you to shut up and fall in line.  You know, as if I were the leader of the Party now and I carried some real sway with you jerks?”

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