Sarah Palin: Ready (Or Not), Here I Come!

On September 11, Sarah Palin gave her first news interview with Charles Gibson of ABC News.  And it scared me.  Everything about the interview merely demonstrated just how inexperienced, and worse, just how unprepared, she is for the possible mantle of the vice presidency.  For starters, she didn't even sound natural when she gave her prepared answers to the questions.  According to a New York Times article, she appeared to "hew so closely to prepared answers that she used the exact same phrases repeatedly".  I mean, OK, I know politicians like to use prepared statements to make their points easily and repeatedly, but come on - at least they should be able to make it sound natural and fluid.  Strike # 2 for Ms. Palin?  When Gibson asked her about Bush's doctrine, she didn't know.  After a few pathetic guesses, such as "His world view" and that President Bush has tried to rid the world of terrorists, Gibson had to tell her what she, a Republican vice-presidential candidate, should definitely know:  The doctrine of President Bush is "the right of anticipatory self-defense".  And yet, it took two more tries for Gibson to get Ms. Palin to give him a straight answer about what she thought about it. "Charlie, if there is a legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country".  (Can anyone spot the grammatical error here?)  Now, OK, that's an answer.  I may not agree with it, but at least we have an answer, and an idea of what she believes about combating terrorists.  And then there's the attempt to insult Mr. Biden's experience: "It is time for no more politics as usual and somebody's big fat résumé that maybe shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state."  OK, I guess that could be Mr. Biden, who's been in the U.S. Senate for 36 years.  Oh, but wait - Mr. McCain has been in the U.S. Senate as well, for 26 years!  Yeah, Ms. Palin meant the barb to be aimed at Mr. Biden.  But I would imagine that the idea is for the attack to be one-sided, not that it could be used to attack your OWN running mate.  Well, now that she's entered the world of the press, I'm sure we can expect more interviews to come.  And there's the Vice-Presidential Debate coming up on October 2nd - a must see event, for sure.  (My money's on Mr. Biden to have the upper hand)  And I'm sure that everyone will agree by the end just how terrible a choice Mr. McCain has made in his choice for a running mate.