Ah yes, the old "come across as an illiterate twit rather than be criticized for your reading habits" stratagem!  Touche, Gov. Palin, touche.

Lopez's take is similar to my own. Palin is playing dumb to MSM now, but she's a cat waiting to pounce. I expect we will see and hear the very well read smart and cagey Sarah Palin in tomorrow's debate. (Remember, you heard it here.)

What would have been so hard about just naming the Anchorage Daily News and praising your hometown paper? Then following that up with the 'thorough daily press briefing Ireceived in my capacity as governor.'

Sadly, she comes off as not only ignorant, but also pitiably incompetent.

Yes, and had she said TNR I might have been forced to cancel my subscription.

Has Gwen Ifill talked with the McCain camp about their comfort level w/ her hosting the debate tomorrow night? If they are, she should lead off by saying they are, if they're not, she should step aside - because the MacCain camp wants her to.

Let the McCain camp show America what they're all about. Pushing a supremely talented black woman off the platform, and replacing her with another older, white male who is expert at asking softball questions.

Another opportunity handed to Obama by a slip-shod campaign operation. They should think before they attack...but that's not the GOP way, is it? Ready...fire...aim.

tomeg: Thetray is right.  To avoid being "pounced on", she could have said, "Well, the newspapers here in Anchorage are pretty sophisticated."  Or, "I read the New York Times especially closely these days, to see what new lies they are spreading."  

Remember, she went to five schools over six years for a BA in journalism.  And nothing she has said - not a word she has said - indicates that she is "well read".  She might well have native street smarts, but I don't think she is smart nor that she is smart enough to have come up with the "sequester me, then I play dumb for weeks on end in various interviews - to the point of not being able to defend McCain - only to blow everyone out of the water by my grasp of geopolitics in the Debate".

And if that were the case, why not ask for a free-wheeling Debate, or two or three VP debates?

I think you have the Crowley disease.  Don't be spooked.  The Republicans are not that good; they suck, in fact.  And so does she.  Ask Todd.

The correct answer was: The Alaskan papers and the WSJ.

The WSJ is respected and conservative--nothing to analyze there.

Yes, tomeg, I'm sure that Palin is going to be shock us all with her stealth intellect. In fact, a Canadian commenter at politico yesterday noted this:

I don't understand why Palin isn't doing more interviews in America. In her hourlong appearance on Canadian TV, she engaged in a trenchant critique of Samuel Huntington's clash-of-civilizations theory, identifying the western Balkans and central Asia as but two significant outliers. She acknowledged Syrian secret service involvement in past unrest in Lebanon, but said to craft a Syria-focused US policy vis-a-vis Lebanon for that reason alone would be "reductionist." I didn't understand the second half-hour very well, when she was answering the questions in French. But I think she gently corrected the interviewer's imprecise use of the word "geostrategic."

[via andrewsullivan]

This was my comment from earlier!!!!!!!!!!   How about some credit here???!!!???

She was merely following Lincoln's sage advice:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

"And what it looked liked to me is the governor of Alaska decided she wasn't going to play along with Couric. Whatever she answered would be scrutinized for the next 24 hours for what she included and left off. So instead she let Katie badger her a little."

This doesn't pass the smell test at all.  It's obvious that no matter what Palin said, or didn't say, her response would be scrutinized.  To wit: here we are scrutinizing her non-answer to Couric's question.  There seems to be this overwhelming sense of the right wing that their VP nominee is 10 steps ahead of everyone else, can see around corners, read minds and is generally playing her critics and the press like a fiddle.  What ever happened to the common sense that conservatives praise so highly?  Such common sense tells me that this is a woman who can't answer simple questions without prattling on and on with non-answers.

I think Lopez is being too generous in her ascrption of tactical skill at that level to Palin, but certainly the question of audience is important.  If there is a large constituency out there -- and evidence suggests there is -- who feels vindicated when someone says, more or less, "I don't need to read fancy newspapers to know what I think about the world," then her ducking the question was in many senses exactly the correct answer.

If your shtick is that you know in your heart/gut/other internal organ lower than the neck that America is always good, that conservatives are always right, and that complexities are just liberal rabbit-traps you have to avoid, then she's not going to suffer for her ignorance of stuff that people on this site consider important.

What Biden has to do is let her appeal to that constituency, and while she's doing so, hopefully she'll scare everyone else in the country who doesn't belong to it.

I think Palin has made an ass of herself many times already, but this instance is tenuous. It seemed like Couric was saying "prove to me that you're not an idiot" and Sarah Palin said "f*** you." Palin could have handled the question better but the dismissiveness was appropriate.

I'm more interested in the alleged Supreme Court cases snippet.

Irrefutable proof of Sarah Palin's hyperintellectual acuity can be found on her secret blog:

missalaska.wordpress.com

<i>What would have been so hard about just naming the Anchorage Daily News and praising your hometown paper?</i>

The only problem with that is the ADN's been hounding her mercilessly over Troopergate.  And doing a fine job, I might add.

Seriously, I posted this on BOTH previous threads about this statement.  True, I used the "what year is it" rather than the "just write a number".  But come on... I need some recognition! :)

What we've seen of Palin over the last month is precisely who she is.  What advantage could the McCain campaign ever hope to gain by counseling her to "play dumb" up until the debate, calling McCain's judgment into question and helping to send his poll numbers into the dumper?  She is in way over her head and knows it.  The campaign knows it.  How else to explain the pre-emptive attacks on Gwen Ifill's impartiality?

This is a campaign that is coming off the rails.  I've never seen anything like it.

prnoonan said:

"This was my comment from earlier!!!!!!!!!!   How about some credit here???!!!???"

I'm sorry, I missed your earlier comment, so I don't have a context for it. I don't understand your comment here, therefore, or to whom it's directed. Could you remind or repost, thanks?

Dabeffert: The Wall Street Journal most certainly has not been a conservative paper historically. Now, the editorial page is an entirely different affair, becoming conservative with the inauguration of the reign of Robert Bartley in - I believe - 1972.

blogs.tnr.com/.../life-imitiates-tina-fey.aspx (at 2:54)

blogs.tnr.com/.../sarah-palin-tnr-reader.aspx (at 2:45... and 7:21)

prnoonan, right, they do that sometimes. I have seen them post some outside blogger using almost word for word type comments of one of our commentators here. It would do TNR a world of good to just use our comment instead of referring to someone elses much later as though it were the first time that had ever been said.

Ok, the infamous Palin CBS interview about judicial decisions that's been rumored for days just aired and I'd like to be the first to report that it's pretty awkward. Especially following a few seconds after Biden's far more articulate and informed answer.

If this is a glimpse of tomorrow night's debate, Obama-Biden is looking good.

Isn't it obvious that most posters here (regardless of affiliation) share 'something' that Palin is lacking? We seek a dialogue. We engage others with the expectation of being challenged. It isn't just her faith that distinguishes her view of the world. Some of my better conversations & discussions that tested my knowledge have been with a Jesuit priest and the topic wasn't theology. My experience with fundementalists is they do not attempt to explore opposing views because they find security in dogma which is enforced in their community.

Plus, this isn't a pure debate but she will be dealing with issues that are more complicated than the typical agenda facing an Alaskan governor.

Biden may know more about the premises she needs to defend than she does because he's spent a life examining the gray areas while she has been cocooned in a life which required no deviation from black or white.  

Notice that she was only recited a rigid doctrine on a few issues in her previous debates. Politics in Alaska isn't very complicated. National policy is not only won or lost in the center, (nuanced answers are required) the range of issues facing a VP are difficult to grasp if one only has weeks to be familiar with their complexity. Will or Brooks are insulted because they believe they earned a right to defend their philosophy through an understanding of the opposition. They also see the danger when intellectual curiosity dismissed. Executive power and monetary policy are but two subjects which can't be addressed in pure Left versus Right philosophies.

She might be able to succeed in the debate if her performance doesn't require her to step outside of the anticipated role she is being trained to project. I doubt there is much to debate in Alaska when the issue is build a pipeline or give citizens more of a cut from oil? The state awash was awash in cash. The Second Amendment in Alaska or access to employment and education probably aren't topics which divide Alaskans.

Palin is facing her first opportunity to prove she can survive in an arena where critical thought requires her to confront non Christian dogma. National and international policies effect voters in a way the provincial agenda of Alaska didn't explore in a dozen debates. I doubt she'll escape if she avoids providing answers which aren't on her script and all the coaching and best memory will leave her with one or two answers which will be compared to Biden's third, fourth and fifth way of viewing each question. Ninety minutes is a long time. She'll prevail only if she's able to transcend the world of Alaska and the best coaching. Few people posting here can appreciate that challenge.