(Crossposted from My Left Wing)
Generally speaking, Sarah Palin takes a good picture. A really good picture. She’s got the gift…good bones, not too much flesh…and she’s got the chops. She knows makeup, knows how to dress and how to fix her hair. Yeah, I know, the hairdo is “outdated”. So’s her constituency. Nevertheless, she looks good.
In still pictures.
Mostly.
But up close and personal? Under pressure? Live? Her insecurites become as plain as day. Visually as plain as day.
You can see it in an occasional candid shot as well. Like this one.
And this one as well.
She’s got a mean streak. Look at the mouth. A barracuda/vampire-level mean streak. Especially when she’s in over her head. And she is in WAY over her head today.
This tendency could be really plainly seen in her ABC interview with Charlie Gibson from which the above stills were taken.
(If the above YouTube vid doesn’t work, just do a search. This interview is ALL over the web. Thankfully. And the YouTube version is being so heavily accessed that it tends to run pretty slowly. Hallelujah and pass the mustard.)
Read on for more.
I have often suggested that pols should be watched with the sound off to get a good take on where they are really coming from. Most big time politicians are so polished as speakers that their voices are almost hypnotic in their effect.
“Blah blah blah blah blahdidy blah blah” and there you are, in the voter trance. But turn the sound OFF and they magically appear in their true vampiric form.
Or…they are such a numbnuts frontman clown that the truth of their stupidity and incompetence shines through.
Palin is a little different. She’s got image. It’s only about as deep as a good application of makeup, but it flat out works in still pictures and it works in motion from far away, too. Like on a podium giving a well-coached and rehearsed speech.
But up close?
Improvising?
Nope.
Not even competitive.
Turn on the interview and close your eyes.
UH oh!!!
She sounds like someone is about to garrote her.
The tension!!!
Now…this is perfectly understandable. If she were appearing on a quiz show or had just won the biggest lottery ever and was making her first public appearance on the Jay Leno Show…well, of course she’d be nervous. What suburban soccer mom would not be nervous in such a situation?
Queen For A Day?
Please!!!
Unfortunately…she is not making that sort of appearance. She is instead auditioning for a position that includes having nuclear custody of each and every one of our mortal asses.
DOUBLE UH OH!!!
And she totally failed her audition.
Believe it.
She failed the oral…failed the aural, too…she failed the visual (Now turn the sound off and watch. Glub glub glub. She’s wildly trying to stay afloat. Glub glub glub. And failing. Glub glub. Down for the third time.), and she TOTALLY failed the content section.
She actually said the following!!!. Not some spinner or spokesman. Ms. Palin.
Palin said she had insights into U.S. relations with Russia because “they’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska … from an island in Alaska.”
Grade?
D-
I kin see my house from here!!!
Bet on it.
Proof?
All political appearances on this level mean nothing in and of themselves. Most Americans, in the words of Richard Rhames, are in the following position:
The depoliticized, disinformed, and disengaged American electorate twitch in their culture-coffins. Soon they will be urged to arise and plod across the dim landscape. Robotically they will stand in line to perform their ritual; attempting to hungrily suck meaning from the wizened and bloodless corpse of a rumored democracy. Then, still famished, they will return to their vaults. But the moon will rise again, and so will they — on and on.
So…how DO they make up what we laughingly refer to as their minds?
They suck at the teat of the media.
And what do the media have to say about Ms. Palin’s appearance with the surprisingly non-softball throwing Mr. Gibson?
Go to Google News and see for yourself.
So far…about 7 to 2 against.
Here are some samples.
At times visibly nervous, at others appearing to hew so closely to prepared answers that she used the exact same phrases repeatedly, Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of “anticipatory self-defense.”
Sarah Palin, who has struck many as a refreshing break from politicians-as-usual, seemed to do Thursday what politicians usually do as their horizons expand — moderate a previous position on a controversial subject.
By the same token, a close reading of what she said shows a lot of hedging on her hedge.
Sarah Palin’s first television interview since becoming John McCain’s Republican running mate attracted mixed reviews.
Mrs Palin has given only scripted speeches since her explosive arrival into the White House race three weeks ago.
Mrs Palin appeared to have been “well-rehearsed” in briefings from the McCain campaign, commentators said, but was occasionally “blind-sided” by unanticipated questions.
More from the NY Times:
“I got lost in a blizzard of words there,” Charles Gibson of ABC News said to Gov. Sarah Palin, with a trace of irritation in his voice. “Is that a yes?”
Ms. Palin didn’t look rattled or lose her cool in her first interview with Mr. Gibson, the network anchor, on Thursday night, but she skittered through with general answers, sticking to talking points that flowed out quickly and spiritedly, a little too much by rote to satisfy her interviewer that she was giving his questions serious consideration. When Ms. Palin seemed not to know exactly what the Bush doctrine is, Mr. Gibson made a point of explaining it — pre-emptive self-defense — and demanded that she tell him whether she agreed with it.
ABC News delivered the first glimpse of Ms. Palin without a script or a cheering audience, and it was a strained and illuminating conversation. Ms. Palin, who kept inserting Mr. Gibson’s nickname, Charlie, into her answers, as if to convey an old hand’s conviviality, tried to project self-confidence, poise and even expertise: She let Mr. Gibson know that she had personally reassured the Georgian president and correctly pronounced his last name, Saakashvili. At times, her eyes looked uncertain and her voice hesitated, and she looked like a student trying to bend prepared answers to fit unexpected questions.
Mr. Gibson, who sat back in his chair, impatiently wriggling his foot, had the skeptical, annoyed tone of a university president who agrees to interview the daughter of a trustee but doesn’t believe she merits admission.
When he asked her, slowly and solemnly to “look the country in the eye” and say whether she truly felt qualified to be vice president and possibly commander in chief, Mr. Gibson seemed to expect Ms. Palin to express at least a moment of humility and self-doubt. Ms. Palin said she had no doubts when asked to be Senator John McCain’s running mate. (“I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink. You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.”) Mr. Gibson suggested that her brash, unwavering confidence sounded like “hubris.”
Oh SHIT!!!
She done fucked up.
The RatPub countermeasures will of course soon appear. But like the metallic chaff that an airplane ejects when trying to confuse a heat-seeking missile that is on its ass…that doesn’t work all of the time. I cannot remember a harsher or less respectful general reaction to a national candidate’s interview from major media, and I do not think that this reaction can be effectively laid at the door of sexism, either.
Proof?
Sure.
Imagine that Condi Rice or Hillary Clinton were a VP choice. I am no Rice fan, but either one of them would have fared better in that interview. So MUCH better that Ms. Palin would not even be in competition with them. They reside on different levels of the public universe than does she, and I do not believe that any combination of professional spin and private learning curve will do much to help her.
She is out of her league.
She is simply not up to the task that has been laid in her lap.
And that is a GOOD thing.
Now for the other shoe.
What will the Rats do next?
Stay tuned.
A wag the dog emergency of some kind is looking more and more likely.
Watch.
They always have a backup plan, the Rats do.
Watch.
Later…
AG
P.S. Let me add a little something here. If the Dems do not have the political wisdom and courage to take this opening and absolutely destroy Ms. Palin’s position in the political universe…a possibility that on the evidence of their many hesitations over the past 8 years given similar opportunities seems frighteningly likely:
If those past Dem tendencies are accurate predictors for this campaign…and I see many of the same professional assholes in place now that I saw in the previous two campaigns… then all bets are off and emigration to another land is looking better and better.
We shall see.
Soon.
Bet on it.
