Not Wild About Barbie?

[lsanderson]

The Year of the Cloned Candidates
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: September 12, 2008

We have been approaching this presidential race the wrong way. It’s not political science. It’s science fiction. Something is amiss in the space-time continuum. More

Dick Cavett
September 12, 2008, 7:40 pm
Experience 101

Dear Reader: It may be time to give up on writing about current events in this space. When you think how news travel time has been telescoped, it’s dizzying. It took days for even the rumors of Custer’s annihilation at Little Big Horn to reach the east. Now any news over two hours old isn’t news — it’s “olds.” Anything from the day before is virtually archaeology.

In reading what follows, be aware that nothing here is exactly meant to be a “this just in” bulletin. And so, the inevitable phrase: “By the time you read this….”

Or, for short:

B.T.T.Y.R.T.: Sarah Palin will doubtless have been outed even further from the witness protection program in which her handlers have kept her secreted since her smasheroo solo performance on That Memorable Night.

There’s no denying that she rocked the place and, as her enthusing boosters said, “She really delivered the goods.”

So she did, even if some were shoddy.

Back here in the past, when I’m writing this, we have just seen part one of her quizzing by Charles Gibson, with mixed reviews for both. So far I have not seen her confronted with some of the things about which she has been, to put it in that awful Diplomatically Correct phrase, “somewhat less than fully truthful.” (Typesetter: If space is scarce, use “lying.”) As in claiming “no thanks” to the bridge money while failing to disclose that she kept it.

Performance is the mot juste for what she did at the convention. And I admit that even my own jaded and cynical showbiz heart leapt up as she wowed the adoring crowd with a show-stopper display of charm and personality. I even laughed at two or three of the two or three too many insults directed at Obama. Don Rickles could not have snapped them out better.

Watching a woman, slight of build and full of pizazz so thoroughly bedazzle a vast audience is entertaining. Something chimed in my memory when she brought that crowd to its feet with frantic and worshipful cheering.

Ah, yes. I had seen it all before.

It was Judy Garland at The Palace.

And yet no one offered her the vice-presidency. (Fact-checker: Am I right on this?)

I wince and feel for her over the reports of how she is being tutored, guided and taught in marathon cram sessions of what might be called a crash course in Instant Experience 101. There’s something almost funny in the idea that she is being speedily stuffed, Strasbourg-goose-style, with knowledge she should have had before she was selected. More

Op-Ed Columnist
She’s Not Ready
By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 12, 2008

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.
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How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president. More

Editorial
Gov. Palin’s Worldview
Published: September 12, 2008

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country. More