Flashback

"A politician can't launch an effective anti-press campaign until he attracts the sort of coverage that he's able to frame as unfair or inaccurate. Sarah Palin was doubly blessed in the last week, as the press asked questions about Bristol Palin's pregnancy and completed the vetting that the McCain never really started . . .

"If Palin had a prayer of winning the blessings of such conservatives as Charles Krauthammer and David Frum, let alone political reporters, she'd be slathering them with flattery. Because she doesn't, she's turning the negatives reported in the press (lack of experience, mediocre résumé, beneficiary of tokenism) into her positives. [The] press is only attacking me, she grins, because they're partners with the elitists who fear that John McCain and I are coming to Washington to tear their playhouse down."

Turning to Steve Schmidt's complaint to me about the alleged viciousness of the Palin coverage: "At the same time the McCain campaign was protesting the press corps' overinterest in the Palin family, it was arranging for a future member of the clan -- Levi Johnston -- to attend the convention. He's Bristol's fiance and the father of the child she's carrying. For the benefit of the network cameras, the campaign seated Johnston in a row with the Palin family and Cindy McCain, where the newborn Trig Palin was passed up and down the line like the campaign prop he's become.

"Palin's mixed message says: Please respect the privacy of my family-- as I exploit them. Respect my family's privacy, but let me wrap myself in baby Trig to prove my anti-abortion stand. Question for the Commission on Presidential Debates: If you let Palin nurse Trig as she debates Joe Biden on Oct. 2 at Washington University, will you level the field by letting Biden bottle-feed one of his grandchildren?"

Palin, says Shafer, will "play the role of Spiro Agnew to McCain's Nixon, dismissing reporters' tough questions as effete, impudent, sacrilegious, snobby, intrusive, unpatriotic, hostile, disrespectful, chauvinistic, 'East Coast,' unfair, unbalanced, liberal, biased, trivial, hypothetical, elitist, and as partisan attempts to lasso her with a 'gotcha.' "

And finally, I worked the convention's radio row for reaction to Palin. Hint: The right loves her.

Just when I finally figured out how to drive from Minneapolis to St. Paul, it's time for me to head home.