Palin interview with Couric "not a reassuring performance"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The TV Watch
A Question Reprised, but the Words Come None Too Easily for Palin
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: September 25, 2008


(CBS News, via AP)
Sarah Palin and Katie Couric at the United Nations. Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin about a statement she had made about Russia.

....On the “CBS Evening News” on Thursday, Katie Couric asked Ms. Palin, Senator John McCain’s running mate, what she meant when she cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as foreign affairs experience. Ms. Palin could have anticipated the question — the topic of their interview, pegged to her visit to the United Nations, was foreign affairs. Yet Ms. Palin’s answer was surprisingly wobbly: her words tumbled out fast and choppily, like an outboard motor loosened from the stern....

***

Ms. Couric asked the governor if she had ever been involved in negotiations, for example, with her Russian neighbors.

“We have trade missions back and forth,” Ms. Palin said. “We — we do — it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border.”

Ms. Palin, looking at Ms. Couric intently, kept on going. “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 there. They are right next to — to our state.”

That exchange was so startling it ricocheted across the Internet several hours before it appeared on CBS and was picked up by rival networks.

While it is quite likely, and perhaps understandable, that Ms. Palin felt nervous and spooked by all the media attention, it wasn’t a reassuring performance. Ms. Palin looked more steady and confident when she took a few questions from reporters after a visit to ground zero in Lower Manhattan, her first, gingerly encounter with campaign reporters since her nomination.

The CBS interview, shown partly on Wednesday and partly on Thursday, was only a first taste — Ms. Couric is scheduled to go out on the campaign trail with the Palin team early next week. But it may be hard for Mr. McCain’s running mate to recoup. It wasn’t her first interview on national television, but in some ways it was the worst....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/us/politics/26watch.html

[provis99]

1. So we should give her a break because she's a total noodle?

What a sorry excuse for a VP running mate McCain picked. I think McCain doesn't really want to be President after all; Palin was the poison pill he choose to kill his own campaign, while going through the motions of the rest of the campaign to make it seem like he gives a damn.