Sarah Palin has a credibility problem.
In her interviews, she tried to provide answers to questions when she clearly didn’t have them. What came out instead was an odd, twisted, mish-mash of words that more closely resembled the management wisdom of David Brent than that of a future Vice President.
Some have characterized this as dishonesty, and I tend to agree. It would be far better if she simply indicated that she had asked to be briefed on the details of an issue she did not yet fully understand than to pretend to give an answer that meant absolutely nothing. By choosing to simply reword the question in a meaningless train wreck of syntax, she not only demonstrated that she didn’t know, but proved she was desperate to hide her ignorance.
She seemed to begin working against this tendency in the debate - being honest about her inexperience and using it well to shield her from questions she couldn’t answer:
IFILL: So, Governor, as vice president, there’s nothing that you have promised as a candidate that you would — that you wouldn’t take off the table because of this financial crisis we’re in?
PALIN: There is not. And how long have I been at this, like five weeks? So there hasn’t been a whole lot that I’ve promised, except to do what is right for the American people, put government back on the side of the American people, stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street.
But in a post-debate interview with Fox, Palin was back to her old tricks. Rather than admitting her mistakes in the interview with Couric, she simply indicated that she was annoyed for not being asked the questions she thought were important to Americans (read: the questions she was prepped for):
Palin told Carl that she was “annoyed” at some of the interviews she has done, “Ok I’ll tell you honestly the Sarah Palin in those interviews is a little bit annoyed because it’s man no matter what you say you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question you are going to get clobbered on the answer,” Palin said. “If you choose to try and pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about you get clobbered for that too.”
She then aimed to defend herself for some of the criticism she got for the Couric interview. She was blasted for not answering Couric’s question on any of the periodicals she reads or even a Supreme Court decision that she disagreed with. She defended some of the circular answers she gave the CBS anchor saying that she did not get to cover some of the topics she saw as important, “But in those Katie Couric interviews I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a V.P. candidate stands for. What the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which would lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars.”
Let me show my own annoyance for a moment when I ask, “Governor Palin, How stupid do you think we are?” Anyone who has ever been put on the spot and didn’t want to look ignorant has probably rambled their way through an incoherent answer. Palin is unwilling (or not allowed) to be up front about this, and when she prefaces her response with, “Honestly…” it’s all the more insulting. It’s not honest. It’s the same squirrely nonsense my kids do when they think they can stay out of hot water by deceiving their parents about what really went down.
We’ve spent the past 8 years with a President who is pathologically incapable of admitting his mistakes. He grows indignant when he’s called on it, rather than saying, “You know, everyone makes mistakes. I tried to do my best here, but I fell short.” Accountability is something I really, really want from our leaders. If you screw up, take responsibility for it, apologize, and move on. Don’t try to spin it so it looks like it was all part of the plan.
Governor Palin either needs to be the honest, average American that people want her to be, or she needs to be kept away from the media. This ongoing insistence that it’s someone else’s fault that she can’t get her answers straight is insulting to those of us she’s meant to appeal to.
Good post, Steve. Like you, I’m tired of being played and lied to. The debate itself was dishonest, as most of Palin’s “opinions” were just discovered last week. The Palin of this campaign isn’t a real person.
I’ve been reading both you and Jeff on this topic with more interest than other “trad” commentators … that is, if indeed others have even really pursued it as much.
But before both of you hold her convicted of systematic lying on her own account, stop and think. She’s only been at this for five weeks in terms of being an active participant in the national campaign. What reliable intelligence do we have of the extent of her “following the story” in the months prior? What, indeed, do we really know about the extent and depth of her extracurricular study and reading throughout her life?
I’ve gotten the distinct impression that the answers to both questions are along the same lines: that she’s been so focused on her day-to-day life in each of its eras as not to have pursued most of these issues all that much. That would seem to be her real problem, in terms of readiness for statecraft: one need not be a scion of some neocommunist big-name university to be truly educated, but what IS required is an engaged and sustained personal interest in grand topics. This may be done on one’s own, as I’ve surely done since I started reading newspapers at age 11.
So aside from what she has already some command of due to her career so far, she seems indeed to be a “tabula rasa,” and picked for one reason above all: her potential as an image to be rallied around, which is exactly what she has become. The apparent fact that her background of knowledge is rather thin would have prevented her from even being considered in a prior age, but today we have a viable and decisive bloc that no candidate can win without, but which no one dares talk about in direct terms: the “stupid vote,” a bloc one can play to without knowing a whole lot oneself.
And make no mistake about it: the fact that in the face of a candidacy of evil principles put forth by the donkey party, this is met with an opposition that, instead of being erudite and principled, is instead geared towards non-thinkers who are moved purely by image-induced impressions.
So what we have is someone who by my reckoning is not habituated in ideological and policy discourse, suddenly being made to try to engage in the same. I suppose she trusts that there is at least the essence of truth in what she’s told to say — because for her to know that she’s engaging in lying would require her to have some background in what she’d be lying about!
There are two main reasons she has become today’s conservative darling. One I’ve mentioned in previous comments: the notion of “conservative lifestyle” has decidedly moved in the direction of liberal pop culture. The other? Sheer desperation. As the last vestiges of Christian sensibilities are systematically purged from our public and cultural life, those who look in horror at these developments are all but begging someone to come forward and be the new standard-bearer, as all the previous ones have either died or lost the ability to move people in great numbers (for the latter, think Pat Buchanan, among others). Sarah Palin has not shied away from putting herself forth in this manner, but many things come together to tell us that she’s more motivated by selling herself than serving the cause.
But this may all be academic. McCain now has too much baggage of his own, in light of the “stupid vote” fleeing him and the elephant party on account of the Wall St. disaster and bailout, not to mention the dirtbag politics of the donkeys and their MSM collaborators, for her image-appeal to overcome. That he rendered himself oblivious to the earmarks in the bailout bill for which he voted, now deeply undermines his credibility on that topic. He didn’t even give a speech on the Senate floor in protest of the pork!
And presuming the donkey would-be commisars win, looking ever more likely, she will find home a very different place than when she signed on to this grand adventure. She will find herself bereft of legislative support, and even should she survive the “troopergate” business, she won’t be able to accomplish much of anything in the remainder of her term as governor.
Somerset, good post. I agree with you that Palin herself isn’t really lying . . . she’s being force fed all this information and told to not back down. She’s trying to do the best she can. But literally 2 years and some odd months ago, she was a major of some town . . . in Alaska! I don’t blame her one iota for not knowing different things. The McCain people should be blamed for putting someone up who wasn’t knowledgable. But as Somerset wrote, that’s not why Palin was picked. I’m not sure why Palin was chosen, to be honest. MOST conservatives would have voted for McCain/Lieberman because they fear Obama. Although conservatives would have been mad, they wouldn’t have stayed home on election day. They feel Obama is that much of a horrible man.
I also don’t think Palin knows what she’s gotten into. And if you have a bunch of “yes” men around you, you can start to believe anything, if your convictions are founded well.
Her mistake was agreeing to a taped interview with a two hostile audiences in the first place.
I’ve gotten the distinct impression that the answers to both questions are along the same lines: that she’s been so focused on her day-to-day life in each of its eras as not to have pursued most of these issues all that much.
I’ve argued as much in this space. See this post:
It’s quite evident that she’s been too occupied with other things to know what she’s talking about. But the fact that she’s willing to try to hide that through such a blatant misrepresentation of actually having positions on key issues - regardless of who is telling her to do it - is a pretty obvious violation of the truth.
Jeff noted that she seems uncomfortable squirreling around the truth. He and I both see that as a good thing - she hasn’t become habituated to bluffing (which, in this case, is a more pleasant euphemism for “lying”). Whatever her reasons, however much her handlers are pushing her, she’s going along with it. She’s pretending to know answers she clearly doesn’t, and that, in itself, is a deception.
I couldn’t care less about her personal culpability - it’s not mine to judge. What I do care about is that I don’t like it when someone who supposedly shares my values attempts to deceive me for political gain. She’s asking for our votes - us, the pro-life conservatives. That’s not how you earn one from me. Quite to the contrary.
Are we going to have to put up with this all the way to November?
Isn’t there anything else you can post about?
How’s the weather?
What’s going on in the world of philately?
How are the kids?
ANYthing?!
(I’ve said it many times: we may be socialist countries, but at least we don’t bore our blog readers into a coma with our political posts for seven straight years. Four weeks. Five. Six tops. Then it’s back to there being stuff for the rest of us.)
I agree with Hilary. I’m so beyond sick of this election. I can’t wait until it’s over, so we can just take our beating from the jackass that wins, and move on with our lives.
I think I’m ready to make the decision never to vote in an election above the municipal level again…