Palin Pushback

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 2, 2008 10:32 AM

For days now, television viewers have watched Sarah Palin unable to explain the significance of her home state's bordering Russia, unable to name a Supreme Court ruling she disagrees with, unable to name a single newspaper she reads.

Her halting, unfocused answers in a series of interviews with Katie Couric have left an unmistakable question hanging in the air before tonight's vice presidential debate: Is Palin going to fall on her face?

Even as some conservative commentators have panned her performances and fretted about how the Alaska governor will fare against Sen. Joe Biden, Palin has challenged the ethics of those interviewing her. Her running mate, John McCain, has complained about "gotcha journalism." And a top campaign official says female journalists are being especially mean to Palin.

All this may or may not add up to a stab at the age-old technique of preemptive spin.

Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain adviser, maintained that Palin is connecting with voters, despite the "mixed reviews" for her sit-downs with CBS's Couric and ABC's Charlie Gibson.

"We didn't expect anyone to treat her as a cream puff because she's a girl," Wallace said. But, she added, "I'm shocked personally at how brutal many of the women in the media have been." Wallace pointed to CNN anchor Campbell Brown, who urged the campaign to arrange more interviews for Palin and stop treating her "like a delicate flower who will wilt at any moment."

Some of Palin's occasionally rambling responses to Couric have been used verbatim in Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" send-up. In an interview Tuesday with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Palin, a former sports reporter, said: "I have a degree in journalism also, so it surprises me that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago." She said she would "take those shots and those pop quizzes" in stride.

But most of the questions have been straightforward. In an exchange last night that was replayed on several networks, Couric, after a question about Roe v. Wade, asked Palin what other Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with.

"Well, let's see," Palin said, smiling and stalling for time. "There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are -- those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know -- going through the history of America, there would be others but --"

Asked again, Palin answered without naming a ruling. Surprisingly, she failed to mention the court's June decision to slash the punitive damages awarded to those whose livelihoods were affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, which Palin denounced at the time.

In another widely replayed exchange:

COURIC: What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this -- to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I've read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media --

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I'm curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

McCain, joining Palin for one of the Couric interviews, said it was "gotcha journalism" for television to replay an answer she gave a restaurant customer on the campaign trail over the weekend. Palin said she favored U.S. attacks in Pakistan from across the border in Afghanistan, contradicting McCain's position.

Palin's debate against Biden, a 35-year Senate veteran, is drawing unprecedented attention. She has become the culturally polarizing force at the heart of the presidential campaign, at times overshadowing the top-of-the-ticket men.

"This is shaping up to be the event of the election," said Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker's Washington correspondent. He offered a blunt explanation: "We're at war, the economy is in collapse, and John McCain picked someone who by most objective measures is not qualified to be president if he dies -- and he's a 72-year-old who's had cancer. It's the shock factor."

Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, dismissed the attacks, saying: "Liberal feminists are really ticked off that there's an attractive, pro-life feminist who's taken the nation by storm." A woman like that, "who also hunts moose and takes on corruption in our most remote state, is foreign to a lot of Northeastern media types." But even Lopez called Palin's initial outings with Couric "disturbing."

Geneva Overholser, director of the Annenberg communication school at the University of Southern California, called the CBS interviews "one of those awful things to watch -- someone thrust into the national limelight and it begins to look as if we might be watching a frightening act of failure."

For the news business, Palin has become a bankable star. She is the most searched term on the New York Times Web site for the past 30 days. Her Wikipedia page drew 6 million visits last month, three times as many as McCain's or Barack Obama's. On YouTube, videos of Fey spoofing Palin have been viewed more than 4.5 million times. And footage of Palin's swimsuit walk in the 1984 Miss Alaska competition has been viewed 680,000 times in the past few days.

Newsweek has done two cover stories featuring Palin; Time has done one. Gibson's interviews with Palin boosted his evening newscast and a "20/20" special to No. 1.

Veep nominees have been embroiled in controversy before. Richard Nixon saved his place on Dwight Eisenhower's ticket with his 1952 "Checkers" speech, invoking his dog while trying to explain away a slush fund. Thomas Eagleton was dumped 18 days after George McGovern picked him in 1972 over revelations that he had received electroshock therapy for mental illness. Geraldine Ferraro spent weeks trying to explain her husband's tangled finances when she became the first woman named to a national ticket in 1984. Four years later, Dan Quayle was portrayed as an inexperienced nominee dogged by questions about his National Guard service.

Some Palin boosters have mounted a "let Sarah be Sarah" drive, arguing that McCain strategists have cosseted her, making her look like a nervous college student cramming for a big oral exam. But Wallace says Palin will do more interviews, including one with the third network anchor, NBC's Brian Williams. "We have no hesitance about putting her in front of as many people as possible," Wallace says.

The latest controversy to hit the echo chamber came yesterday as a conservative Web site challenged the fairness of tonight's moderator, PBS's Gwen Ifill, for writing a book about Barack Obama and other rising black politicians, even though the book project has long been public.

Ifill's forthcoming book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," was mentioned in a Sept. 4 Washington Post article. WorldNetDaily.com, in criticism that was picked up by the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh, questioned whether the book would be "pro-Obama" and undermine her fairness as moderator.

"The book has been out there and discussed for months," PBS spokeswoman Anne Bell said. "It's a non-issue." (WorldNet is offering its readers a $4.95 book titled "The Audacity of Deceit: Obama's War on American Values.")

Ifill moderated the 2004 debate between Vice President Cheney and John Edwards, and if that is any indication, she will ask both candidates hard, detailed questions. McCain told Fox News yesterday: "I think that Gwen Ifill is a professional, and I think she will do a totally objective job because she is a highly respected professional."

A final thought on Ifill (who told me last month of Obama that "I still don't know if he'll be a good president"): I'll be happy to critique her fairness or lack thereof after the debate. But to slam her before the debate, on the basis of the title of a book she hasn't published yet?

Wow -- Keith Olbermann called Palin's non-answer on the Supreme Court the "smoking gun of stupidity." And Fox media critic Bernie Goldberg said she was making Dan Quayle "look like Socrates."

By the way, L.A. Times blogger David Sarno alerted me that after I reported Monday that CBS had more embarrassing footage of Palin, a site called Blue Tidal Wave ran the headline, "Couric Hides Embarrassing Palin Tape in Exchange for Exclusive Interviews." In fact, CBS posed the same questions to Palin and Biden and always planned to air the responses last night and tonight.

This WP poll has to be bad news for the Palin camp: "Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of it."

The Palin pregame handicapping is making my head spin. Has she already dug herself into a deep hole? Or does she now have to show only that she can string sentences together?

John Nichols in the Nation: "It is true that the bar has been lowered for Palin. But as the debate approaches, it is being raised for McCain. He needs a running mate who won't cause him any more embarrassment.

"And, be assured, there is no greater embarrassment for a presidential candidate than constant speculation about whether he is going to have to clean up the mess he made of the one really important pick he had to make as his party's nominee."

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin sees glimmers of hope:

"Sarah Palin's latest Katie Couric interview and certainly the Hugh Hewitt interview from Tuesday show some improvement over her prior outings. She is more confident and less halting than she was in her first Couric outing. There is promise there -- that she can relate the current crisis to ordinary voters (e.g. she and Todd and their 401K plight) and that she can explain her social policy positions in disarming and positive ways. And she very sincerely explained to Hewitt her emotional devotion to Israel. (One wishes Barack Obama would express the same sense of moral clarity on the topic).

"But to be successful, not just survive, on Thursday night she will need to do a few things. For starters, she needs specific answers when asked very basic questions ( e.g. what newspapers does she read, name three things McCain will do to fix the financial mess). She needs to be sharper about Joe Biden. Why is his insiderness is a problem? Because he never rocked the boat when his fellow Democrats were protecting the gross malfeasance of Fannie and Freddie and he has $51.5M in earmarks in latest spending bill, for example. She has to clean up her syntax -- e.g. 'feel the impacts.' She also should be talking more about what executive experience she had ( e.g. this is how I cut the budget, this is how you get rid of people in your own party who are corrupt)."

And, of course, be totally relaxed.

Why couldn't Palin name one newspaper she reads? American Prospect's Ezra Klein has a theory:

"You have to appreciate the bind the McCain campaign has put Palin in. By launching an overwhelming attack against 'media elite,' they effectively walled off leading publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Palin couldn't name them, because to legitimize them would undercut the campaign's rhetoric from recent weeks. At the same time, the fear is that she's really just a parochial, small town mayor and small state governor who's unready for the national stage. She can't name the Anchorage Daily Post or whatever and risk someone reporting that her primary information source doesn't even have a foreign bureau."

But maybe McCain/Palin can get even more creative at working the refs, Michelle Cottle suggests in the New Republic:

"At first, the campaign smeared anyone asking questions about -- or of -- Palin as snotty, contemptuous elitists who disliked poor Sarah because she is a regular person.

"As that angle became exahausted, the campaign decided that, on second thought, anyone who doesn't love Sarah must be a raging sexist with no respect for the entire gender.

But time moves on, and it seems that this week's approach will be to dismiss Palin's own screw-ups as the shameful product of 'gotcha journalism' ---- even in instances when Palin is responding to a regular voter (i.e. not a reporter) asking a question at a campaign event, and even when she gamely tackles said question with great zest and specificity. No matter: Still gotcha journalism.

"Whew. Team McCain is burning through the list of groups to blame at an alarming clip. At this rate, with five weeks left to go, they are at serious risk of running out of ways to paint Palin as the victim of some overarching prejudice. Religious persecution is still available for use, as is the well-documented bias against people who wear glasses."

A plethora of polls favor Obama, who has clearly gotten a bounce from the Wall Street mess and the first debate.

CBS has Obama up 49-40: "Mr. Obama's favorability rating, at 48 percent, is the highest it has ever been in polls conducted by CBS and The New York Times. At the same time, the number of voters who hold an unfavorable view of Mr. McCain -- 42 percent -- is as high as it has been since the CBS News and The Times began asking the question about Mr. McCain in 1999, the first time he ran for president."

Time gives Obama a 50-43 lead, propelled by concerns over the financial crisis and a return of support from female voters.

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when Obama was slipping in the polls and various Dems (and liberal pundits) were urging him to go on the attack against McCain? Now that the pendulum has swung against McCain, we're seeing similar advice from his party's second-guessers, as we see in this Politico piece:

"John McCain's fade in recent polls, combined with a barrage of negative news coverage during the financial crisis, has leading Republican activists around the country worrying about his prospects and urging his campaign to become much more aggressive against Barack Obama in the remaining month before Election Day.

"A flurry of new polls shows Barack Obama gaining in several battleground states -- most notably Florida, Pennsylvania and swing states throughout the West. Officials worry early voting, which is under way in important states such as Ohio, is likely to favor Obama in this toxic political climate. Several state GOP chairmen in interviews urged the McCain campaign to be more aggressive in hitting Obama's vulnerabilities, such as his past relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other problematic associations from Chicago.

"But as September turns to October -- Wednesday marks 34 days to the Nov. 4 election -- it is clear McCain himself is to blame for the most urgent problems. His snap decision to throw himself into the bailout debate has proven disastrous, since his efforts looked late and half-hearted, and many in the GOP ignored his pleas in Monday's House vote.

"And his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, initially a political boon, has become a distraction inside and out of the campaign, with top staff now sidelined trying to avoid a debate disaster on Thursday night, officials close to the campaign say."

The Senate last night showed the House how it's done:

"In stark contrast to the House rejection of the plan on Monday, a bipartisan coalition of senators -- including both presidential candidates -- showed no hesitation in backing a proposal that had drawn public scorn, though the outpouring eased somewhat after a market plunge followed the House defeat," the New York Times reports. "The Senate margin was 74 to 25 in favor of the White House initiative to buy troubled securities in an effort to avoid an economic catastrophe." (Note: Don't tell McCain, but it's got plenty of pork, such as $6 million for the makers of kids' wooden arrows.)

Which will have a bigger impact on the campaign -- whether the House cobbles together a coalition that can pull the economy back from the cliff, or whether Palin cobbles together a decent performance at tonight's debate?

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."