PALIN: Also, John McCain's maverick position that he's in, that's really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has. Look at Lieberman, and Giuliani, and Romney, and Lingle, and all of us who come from such a diverse background of -- of policy and of partisanship, all coming together at this time, recognizing he is the man that we need to leave -- lead in these next four years, because these are tumultuous times...And we have not got to allow the partisanship that has really been entrenched in Washington, D.C., no matter who's been in charge. When the Republicans were in charge, I didn't see a lot of progress there, either. When the Democrats, either, though, this last go- around for the last two years.(Emphasis mine.) Oops, I meant partisan, eek--I meant lead! I meant lead! Quite a Freudian slip...The final sentence is royally confusing--is she separating herself from her party? Or did she mean to say Democrats, mistakenly say Republicans, and cover it up by moving on to the Democrats? We'll never know.
Or how about this line? "It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street." Did she mean people need to not get into to debt like her ma and pa taught her, as she implied at the beginning of the debate, or did she mean Wall Street is affecting Main Street? Again, her answers mean something, but what that meaning is remains unclear.
It seems to me she's getting a free pass--what they would have called a gaffe if it had been uttered by Biden seems to be passed off as a "slip of the tongue" in her case. Dirk McQuigley has a good post over on Daily Kos about how the media hammered Ford in 1976 for a similar slip, and it might have cost him the election. Why the media isn't hammering Palin is sadly most likely due to the lowered-expectations factor. Or that we've all gotten so used to Bush's use of "nukyeler" (when in doubt, spell it out) and "misunderestimate" that no one cares anymore. But heck, she sure had practiced saying Ahmadinejād, dontcha think? You betcha.
2 comments:
She is getting such a free pass it is indeed amazing. So many folks have commented on how she did better. Better? Yikes! Yes, she did finish sentences, but she substituted dropping word endings, repeating non-sensical phrases, caricaturing herself and others, and having no substance. How is that better?
It has been rather sad to see media members, and pundits, assert that somehow she has passed the test of whether she is cogent and coherent. Moreover, they have allowed the McCain campaign to construct at will this caricature of Palin as somehow being both "folksy" (why would that performance be folksy? -- there is no standard here), and somehow representative of "real Americans." Uh? Yikes, I am a real American, and know many others, and we certainly don't speak like that, nor stand against common sense, reason, the law, etc.
I feel sad for her in a tragic sort of way, but also so disappointed that we've gotten here, and upset because she is not a complete innocent in this degradation of our public life. : )
Thanks!
Well put. It's true, the bar was set so low that she only had to jump about 5 inches to clear it. I think in many ways you hit on a good point about her supposed representation of "real Americans." In many ways the "real" Americans she purports to be like are those who the Republican party typically demonizes, i.e. mothers with pregnant unmarried teenage daughters, and women with children who have high-powered careers and work outside the home. We need reclaim the term "real American"! And the Maverick family wants their name to stop being associated with the man who voted with Bush 90% of the time...
In some ways she is tragic, but the more I read about her the more I think she has such a huge ego--and that she really has her eye on the presidency, incredibly--that she probably has never once questioned her actual competency for the position. (She doesn't blink!)
Thanks for your comments.
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