Sarah Surfing

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008 10:04 AM

Sarah Palin is fighting back against the "jerks."

Cooking moose chili and slicing sandwiches for Matt Lauer and Greta Van Susteren, chatting up Larry King and Wolf Blitzer, the Alaska governor is denying, deflecting and denouncing the worst her unnamed critics have thrown at her. She has called them "cruel," "mean-spirited" and "immature," renounced her designer wardrobe and insisted that she is not geographically challenged.

Again. And again. And again.

"She wants to rehabilitate her image and get everyone to love her again," says Larry Persily, a former Palin aide. "If I were advising her, say it once and then stop. You protest too much. You start to look a little foolish."

But Dan Schnur, who runs the University of Southern California's Institute of Politics, says the challenge is simple: "Feed the media beast or it's going to feed on you."

"In a remarkably short period of time, Sarah Palin has become the most polarizing American politician since, well, Hillary Clinton," says Schnur, a former GOP strategist. "Some people will watch her and roll their eyes, but those aren't the people who vote in Republican presidential primaries."

For a vice presidential nominee who never held a news conference, Palin is on one heckuva television blitz. Media organizations, stoking the buzz that she might make a White House run in 2012, can't get enough of the woman who was both hailed as a moose-hunting maverick and blamed for John McCain's defeat. Van Susteren's "On the Record" drew its biggest audience of the year, 3.8 million, for Palin's interview Monday; the next night, viewers saw Van Susteren riding on a snow machine with Palin's husband, Todd.

Palin is clearly in need of some image rehab. Her stumbling interview with CBS's Katie Couric, mocked by Tina Fey on "Saturday Night Live," sent her stock tumbling, and by Election Day, polls showed that a majority of Americans felt she was unqualified to be vice president. Palin now insists that she wasn't muzzled and that, despite evidence to the contrary, there was no tension between her and the McCain team.

"I don't think this woman is afraid of anyone or held back by anyone," Van Susteren says.

Whether Palin is holding forth in her Wasilla kitchen or doing interviews, as she did yesterday at a gathering of Republican governors in Miami, she appears far more relaxed than she did during the campaign. Drawing on her considerable reserves of charm, she is using the media to complain about unfair media coverage. And she has a point.

Journalists have been vacuuming up leaks from former McCain campaign aides who have depicted her as stubborn, uninformed and unprepared -- all from behind a curtain of anonymity. One unnamed adviser told Politico's Mike Allen that Palin was a "whack job." Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron quoted sources as saying that Palin didn't know the countries involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement and thought Africa was a country, not a continent.

Palin says it is difficult to respond to anonymous sources and their "false allegations." She told NBC's Lauer, for instance, that she is "flabbergasted" that anyone could say she was responsible for the $150,000 worth of clothing and accessories paid for by the Republican Party.

Van Susteren says she is "scandalized" by the way journalists are using blind quotes to denigrate Palin. "I think anonymous sources have a place in journalism, on government malfeasance and whistle-blowing," she says. "But when did we become the National Enquirer that we're reporting gossip? It's very unfair."

Cameron, her Fox colleague, says he stands by what sources told him on condition that he not report it until after the election. "This was a circular firing squad, and they let me watch," he says. "To the degree people thought I was enjoying my reporting -- some thought I looked overenthusiastic -- I may have blown the execution."

Politico's Allen says of the whack-job quote: "I found it illuminating because it came from an extremely senior McCain person, clearly reflecting the views of others in the inner circle. I would not have used it from the peanut gallery, internal or external."

Palin did not use these forums to back off her harshest campaign rhetoric. Asked by Blitzer about her charge that Barack Obama was "palling around with terrorists," she said: "Well, I still am concerned about that association with Bill Ayers. And if anybody still wants to talk about it, I will, because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist."

The onetime sports anchor told King the media need to "get back to who, what, when, where and why. . . . If I can help restore that credibility in the press . . . I want to be able to help."

While taking swipes at bloggers -- "probably sitting there in their parents' basement, wearing their pajamas" -- Palin also misstated some facts. She complained to Lauer about "the rumors, the speculation, even in mainstream media, that Trig wasn't actually my child, that Trig was somebody else's child and I faked a pregnancy," calling that "absolutely ridiculous."

In fact, no mainstream outlet published the Internet rumors until the McCain campaign issued a statement, during the GOP convention, that Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant. McCain officials told reporters they were putting out the news because of inquiries about whether the governor was really Trig's mother.

Palin told Lauer she found it "annoying" when Couric asked, "What do you read up there in Alaska?" as if it were a remote corner of the Earth. But although Lauer did not point it out, Couric, his former "Today" co-host, had simply asked Palin what newspapers and magazines she regularly reads "to stay informed," with no reference to her state. In response, the governor declined to name a single publication.

Palin told Van Susteren that "mainstream media" kept publishing questionable stories "instead of just coming to me and, you know, setting the record straight." She said of critical female journalists: "I just would have loved to have the opportunity to have sat down and spoken with them." In fact, after her encounters with Couric and ABC's Charlie Gibson, the campaign all but cut off media access to Palin and rejected most interview requests.

David Zurawik, the Baltimore Sun's television critic, says Palin has "run rings around" those questioning her.

"I was really disappointed in Matt Lauer," he says. "I thought he was so accommodating and letting her get away with stuff without following up." Zurawik calls the Van Susteren interview "beyond friendly," saying: "Greta Van Susteren is totally sympathetic to her and makes no secret about it."

With the campaign over, Palin seems more than happy to fill the media void. "Being in the limelight is good," says Persily, a former Anchorage Daily News editor. "She's smitten by it, just like McCain was smitten by her. She loves the attention."

Footnote: MSNBC anchor David Shuster thought he had nailed one of the culprits leaking derogatory information about Sarah Palin to Fox News -- including such allegations as the Alaska governor's confusion over African geography.

"Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks," Shuster reported Monday.

Turns out that's wrong.

Shuster proceeded to interview two guests about the revelation on Eisenstadt's blog -- but Eisenstadt is a fictional creation.

So is the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy, the think tank with which he was allegedly associated, and so are the YouTube clips of the supposed scholar.

After other bloggers challenged his existence -- and other media outlets, including the New Republic, were taken in -- the New York Times reported yesterday that two filmmakers created Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character.

"The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air," MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said. "We issued a correction on air within minutes of making the error."

Meanwhile, Palin continues to rouse strong emotions, if the commentary out there is any indication. Tina Brown circles back to the question that, perhaps unfairly, dogged her opening days as the VP nominee:

"So far the interviews with Sarah Palin in her TV media blitz have failed to answer the only question I'm interested in: Now that it's all over, Sarah, who does look after the kids?

"I could never see a shot of the dynamite-looking Palin sashaying out to greet the crowd in those borrowed gladrags without thinking of what it must be like backstage. If it was anything like the early childrearing scene in my own house, the baby was throwing up, Piper was bleating about her missing coloring book, Bristol was sitting sullenly with her iPod giving every one filthy looks, and Todd Palin didn't notice any of it because he was on the phone.

"Frockgate -- the revelation that the GOP spent $150,000 on the former hockey mom's designer duds -- only heightened the collective female desire to hear Palin tell it like it really was on the campaign trail, standing there in her pantyhose in the hotel suite, stabbing at her BlackBerry while also struggling into a too-small Galliano jacket that looked great on the hanger but has some fantail flourish at the back that makes her butt look big. 'Can someone undo this darn zip! Shoot! Now my hair's messed up!' Come on, Sarah, fess up! We know it happened! . . .

"That's why the missed opportunity in Palin's interviews (interviews that will be rich ridicule fodder for other reasons) was her answer to Van Susteren's most sisterly question about the ordeals of the campaign: 'Was it harder on your family, do you think?' 'My family's pretty tough,' she replied, 'and they -- because I've been in local office and state office since '92. You know, the kids have grown up with this. I think they're kind of used to that, which is sort of unfortunate, if you think about it, that they've -- you know, they've grown up seeing things said and written about their mom that, you know, even they know hasn't always been true. But I think that they know that that's sort of the nature of the beast of politics.'

"Oh, really? Eight-month-old Trig knows? Seven-year-old Piper, who was yanked from school and her friends for two months, knows? I'm unwilling to believe that Palin is an uncaring mother, so this blithe statement of unreflective parenting reflects and reinforces what working women with children seem obliged to tell themselves."

To which I'd reply: Why do male politicians never get asked these questions?

Andrew Sullivan is still steamed that Palin was tapped to run for the second-highest office in the land:

"Some readers think my continuing attempt to expose all the lies and flim-flam and bizarre behavior of Sarah Palin is now moot. She's history -- they argue. Move on. I think she probably is history. Even Bill Kristol and his minions in the McCain-Palin campaign may not be able to resuscitate her political viability now. But even if she is history, she is history that matters.

"Let's be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months -- and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish -- is a sign of their total loss of nerve."

A number of conservative bloggers are furious at McCain's operatives, and after his Jay Leno appearance Tuesday, at the Arizonan himself. Michelle Malkin leads the charge:

"From the man whose best-sellers include 'Why Courage Matters' and 'Character Is Destiny' comes this underwhelming reaction to the cowardly smearing of Sarah Palin by his own unnamed staffers:

" 'These things happen.'

"Not: 'Shame on the leakers. I denounce and renounce them.'

"Not: 'I'm going to get to the bottom of this and make sure those blabbermouths never work in a major campaign again.'

"Just: 'These things happen.'

"Yup. Business as usual from The Maverick's not-so-maverick campaign."

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders is also disgusted:

"Whatever the intention of the anonymous leaker (or leakers) from the McCain campaign who spread nasty rumors about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in the end they did not so much trash the image of Caribou Barbie, as they ended up tarnishing the public's perception of their G.I. Joe, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

"It tells you everything that the Palin smear stories come from anonymous staffers. There is no documentation. There is no way to prove the rumors false. Think graffiti in a junior high school girls' room . . .

"The political press corps doesn't win any awards in this episode, either. Remember when the pack would not jump on National Enquirer stories about John Edwards' relations with Rielle Hunter and child -- because the story had not been nailed down? It seems that there is a different standard for Palin -- to wit, anything goes."

Edwards came out of seclusion the other night with a speech -- but only took written questions, which means he didn't have to talk about his affair. Hot Air's Ed Morrissey wonders if Edwards has a post-Enquirer future:

"Can John Edwards rehabilitate himself? As Andrew Malcolm notes, Americans tend to forgive, if not forget. Bill Clinton managed to get past his serial infidelities to win the Presidency. Even after more revelations and nearly getting booted from office by Congress over his perjury in connection with his philandery, Clinton manages to remain popular, and while one can argue that he did more harm than good to Hillary's campaign, it wasn't his infidelities that did the damage.

"Edwards, though, has other problems. In the first place, he's a raging hypocrite. He ran on his wife's illness as a martyr while cheating on her at the same time. . . .

"I doubt that rehabilitation is in the cards for Edwards."

I'd agree, at least in the political sense.

When Democrats win the White House, there's usually pressure for diverse appointments. But maybe not this time, Politico says:

"To borrow the oft-used sports analogy, after years of seeing Jackie Robinsons take the field in different professions, the American people finally put one in the owner's box. But now that we have a black Branch Rickey in Barack Obama, what does that mean for the rest of the team? Put in political terms, does our first African-American president, elected with a rainbow coalition, have more of an imperative to appoint an administration that includes minorities in high-ranking positions?

"Not really, is the answer supplied by a group of prominent African-Americans. Having a team of varied faces is preferable and in keeping with Obama's pledge to represent all Americans -- but these veteran black politicians and public officials say the president-elect should tap into the best talent available without taking a head-counting approach, in which slots are determined by demographics and symbolism trumps substance."

During a speech in Chicago, U.S. News columnist and Fox News commentator Michael Barone said the following:

"The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby. They wanted her to kill that child. . . . I'm talking about my media colleagues with whom I've worked for 35 years."

The audience booed. Barone told Politico that he "was attempting to be humorous and . . . went over the line."

I wholeheartedly agree.