Legally Brunette: Palin Should Throw in the Towel, Before Debate

By Myron Pitts

In 2006, the State of Alabama executed a convicted murderer in Huntsville. The man had to be dragged into the death chamber by the guards, after he said he would not participate in his own execution. As the lethal drugs began to take hold he muttered the fragment, “This is some nasty.”

I believe we will all be saying something similar some time on Thursday night if John McCain’s campaign allows Sarah Palin to get dismantled before 40+ million viewers on live TV. What turns the typical reality TV show into a freak show is the kind of character whose wild or unsavory actions invite the worst sort of voyeurism. It’s the car accident you can’t look away from. Think of the disgusting Puck from The Real World or the conniving Omarosa from The Apprentice.

When McCain plucked Palin from the other side of the Bridge to Nowhere, we all knew the Alaskan governor was the wildest of wild cards. But buried beneath the nonsense about her family matters; the hockey mom bit; the moose-hunting; her lipstick; Troopergate, “First dude” Todd and his separatist group ties; and all the other assorted bits of triva, buried beneath it all was the terrifying fact that Palin is a tabula rosa, a complete and total blank slate, on international and national politics. She lacks precisely the skill set needed for the critically important job she was chosen for. That this Legally Brunette former TV anchor and beauty queen would back up a president who is 72 and has had four bouts of cancer is not lost on anyone who cares more for the country than for partisan politics.


If her Charlie Gibson interview raised red flags, this past week’s one with Katie Couric removed all doubt that Palin is not nearly ready. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker became the latest conservative opinion-maker to acknowledge such. Parker progressed from being a Palin supporter to asking the governor to drop out of the race for the good of the country. I join Parker in her call, echoed this weekend by the New York Times’ Bob Herbert.

The same economic crash that partly buried Palin’s disastrous interview with Couric is the very kind of crisis that throws into sharp relief her level of unpreparedness. The McCain campaign has kept her cloistered away from the media, and with good reason. While her counterpart Joe Biden has given more than 100 interviews, Palin has done two legitimate ones and one exercise in cream-puffery with GOP flak Sean Hannity. After the McCain and Obama debate, Biden made himself available to anyone who wanted his take on the proceedings. Palin was tucked away and guarded in an Irish pub, shaking hands.

SHE CAN’T FAKE IT

I used to be in the school that believes the McCain people have kept Palin under too tight control and that she would benefit, and the campaign, too, by being loosed. Let her go for self, this view holds: Sure she’ll make some gaffes, but she would be herself and would fight on through. I no longer subscribe to that view. I thought she could follow the advice, “fake it till you make it.” But you have to know a smattering of real information beyond canned soundbites to even credibly fake it.

Nothing Couric asked Palin seemed particularly difficult. There were no “gotchas,” just the standard fare you would ask someone who, in 38 days, could be elected as the backup to the most powerful person in the world. Incredibly, Palin tried to explain — again — that Alaska’s geographic proximity to Russia constituted foreign policy experience. As someone wrote on a blog, that would be like arguing that, because you can look down and see your feet, you’re qualified to be a podiatrist.

Part of Palins’ rambling “answer” is oft-quoted:

We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right next to, they are right next to our state.

This is not even coherent. Palin started to speak and mid-way forgot where she was in her thoughts.

Or check out this gem, when Couric asked her about why Americans should support the $700 billion bailout:

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Of this passage, political analyst Fareed Zakaria wrote: “This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head.”

CORRECTING A CYNICAL TRICK

Palin is not to blame, and by all accounts, she is not dumb. She has simply never given much thought to matters of state, as indicated by comments she made last year about the Iraq War. “I’ve been so focused on state government,” she said in an interview shortly after taking office in 2007. “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”

The blame for putting up this unqualified VP pick is squarely on John McCain, who put winning an election before his country. His slogan, “Country First,” could not possibly be more empty.

This is correctable.

Palin should drop out, preferably before the debate. She could say that family obligations, including raising a child with Down Syndrome, prevent her from pursuing a job that proved to be a bigger commitment than she ever imagined. The McCain campaign can touch it up by blaming we jackals in the media for hounding this fine woman away from national public service.

I am not of the opinion of some that such a move would sink his campaign, especially if the point is stressed that the decision is Palin’s. McCain’s return to responsible leadership might even gain him a few notches in the polls. But even if Palin quitting the trail did fatally damage the campaign, it would only serve McCain and his team right for pulling this cynical trick on the American people and using Palin in a way that is insulting to all women.

If there were any justice, she would pay them back by showing up to the debate, then refusing to answer the bell. Let them dangle. They are fully prepared to let her do so on Thursday night. Already there is speculation that the McCain campaign, with its handling of Palin, may have broken one of the GOP’s rising stars by completely undermining her confidence.

The devil in me wants the debate to go on. It’s the same part of me that watched, rapt, as Omarosa broke down in Donald Trump’s board room. But the American in me wishes Palin would have the courage and dignity to stop the madness right now.

Country first.


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