October 3, 2008

  • Bluffin' Palin -- Will She Succeed in Fooling America?

    The McCain campaign admits that Gov. Palin was wrong when she suggested that McCain also supports the homeowner protection provisions described by Sen. Biden in the debate.

    This
    confirms what I suspected at the time (and other times during the
    debate) -- that Sarah Palin was bluffing her way past her own
    ignorance. She once again showed a lack of "straight-talk" of the worst
    kind -- afraid to admit her own ignorance, yet willing to risk a lie in
    order to give the answer she thought would be politically pleasing to
    the audience, i.e. what people wanted to hear.

    The gaffe by
    Palin occurred at a part of the debate where Sen. Biden described the
    Obama/Biden position and stated that to his knowledge, Sen. McCain did
    not support such provisions. Gov. Palin briefly responded by stating
    (with a slight but noticeable hesitation) that Biden's statement was
    not accurate, before moving on to talk about a different topic rather
    than the question at hand.

    Because the rules prohibited the
    candidates from addressing each other (and probably also due to a
    strategic decision to avoid attacking Palin and focusing on McCain)
    Sen. Biden avoided confronting Palin when she either avoided questions
    or gave shaky, vague, or even contradictory, inconsistent answers. I
    personally think that while Biden was otherwise superb in his
    performance, he could have done a bit more to indirectly suggest that
    Palin clarify her responses, or to actually address the questions. But
    I suppose there was a danger of appearing condescending or snide, and
    overall I do think Biden showed superior command of the issues and was
    successful in making the overall point that McCain/Palin do not
    represent any significant new ideas.

    However, the real failing
    here is that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, did not do a good enough job of
    simply asking the candidates to answer the questions or asking
    follow-ups. The example above is a case where Gov. Palin got away with
    a dubious (and revealed to be incorrect) response and pivoting to a
    different topic. Had the moderator actually followed up on this and
    other points, instead of allowing Palin to filibuster in avoiding
    questions, we might have seen a similar struggle as we did in the
    Couric interview.

    This tendency of Palin to try to bluff her way
    through answers reveals a false bravado born of insecurity that very
    much concerns me. She appears to be so insecure that she's willing to
    indicate false knowledge or take unintentional policy positions rather
    than admit her own ignorance. If she were to have any position of
    serious authority (and she pretty much admitted she wants power)
    regarding national security or foreign relations, it could be a very
    precarious situation for the country. Will she be willing to confess
    her ignorance of issues to staff, congressional leaders, or even
    foreign leaders and diplomats? Or will she try to bluff her way through
    a situation, and unknowingly convey a false position (as she did at the
    debate) that is then acted upon by the people to whom she is
    communicating.