Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is Susan Alexander...

Amusing comment left on this post that dared to observe that Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric was less than wholly impressive:

what do you know. english marxist hates palin. she did better than biden.

Well, it's a point of view. What's more interesting is the question why Palin has been so poor. The easy answer, of course, is that she's just not up to it and certainly that's the obvious, immediate impression one gets from her Couric interview. So much so, in fact, that one can't help but feel rather sorry for her. Yet my sense is that, while she's clearly no foreign policy maven, she's dramatically under-performed the (quite low) expectations even folk predisposed to give her a chance were prepared to grant. She isn't usually - or, if you prefer, necessarily - a babbling, incoherent wreck. See this Charlie Rose interview for example. So, again, why? Nerves, clearly. Also the sense, one imagines she may feel, that she may be out of her depth. The vastness of the stage too.

In fact, her performance is akin to that of an actor who, suffering from stage fright, forgets her first line and then, trying to get back on track, finds herself jumbling lines from this scene with ones from the rest of the play, creating an entirely new, but alas nonsensical, text that loses the audience and, before long, the actor too. Soon you have no idea where you are or what comes next even though you do - or did half an hour ago - actually know the lines. Of course, on stage you might have other actors who could help you out. But TV interviews are a one-player show in which there's no hiding place.

Alternatively and, it must be said, less charitably, she's Susan Alexander and all the training in the world can't turn her into Maria Callas. Of course, that would leave John McCain to play Charles Foster Kane...
UPDATE: Ezra Klein has more. As does Chris Orr.

Comments

[toby]

I've worked with people who were just not up to their job. After a while, you blame the people who put them into that position.

I said before that the expectations set for here were way to high. She has been compared to Harry Truman and there is a definite resemblance (Roosevelt hardly knew him when he was selected as VP, he was a small-town business man and journeyman Senator with no foreign policy experience). In 1948, Truman barnstormed across the country, attacking the Do-Nothing Congress (I think he invented the term) and won an election that many thought was beyond him. It was one of those rare occasions (like John Major after Margaret Thatcher) when the incumbent won despite the disadvantage of a long party term in office.

The GOP needed a "barnstormer" and Palin seemed at first to fit the bill. Her convention speech lit a fire under the campaign that was badly needed. But the first time I saw her on TV at a live appearance on the stump, I knew she was out of her depth. She was not fully at ease and was barely average in her delivery. No fires were lit, in other words.

Truman had over three years to prepare for 1948, Palin had 3 days. I actually sympathize with her. It is not that she could not one say be Vice-President, even President (though let me add: God Forbid!). But two years as Governor of a state with no income-tax and continually buoyant revenues from oil wealth, was poor preparation.

The real culprit here is John McCain, who made an offer an ambitious politician could not refuse. It is hard to see who McCain could have selected who would have both excited the base and gained the necessary fluency in foreign policy and economics.

Pawlenty? His convention speech was insipid. Ridge? Good on the issues, but pro-choice and would have alienated the base. Maybe Jindal, but he was rejected for reasons I do not know.

I think the McCain-Palin ticket is set to lose, but she has been the discovery of the campaign (as Barack Obama was for the Democrats in 2004). Ok, she may have been lampooned and even humiliated but if she is as thick-skinned and resilient as I suspect, we will have not heard the last of her on November 4th.

[NJB]

Palin is very much the underwhelming pick and I agree that, for whatever her merits or demerits may be, she was thrown into the fire with no preparation.

the thing about the VP job, in my opinion, is that the person should do the least possible. In fact, nothing aside from ceremonial stuff. The Cheney/ Gore model of being hyper-active and trying to be usefully employed is not my cup of tea. Bush père had it right by giving that idiot Quayle some ad hoc council to play with and have him stay out serious affairs.

McCain isn't dead. He has, what?, a 1/10,000 chance of dying in office. People write about Palin as if McCain were already dead and Palin was moving into the oval office.
The Vice-Presidency is a non-entity job for non-events. But since most of this election campaign has revolved around much ado about nothing, its not surprizing that Palin's signifance has been blown out of proportion.

[ndm]

NJB writes "McCain isn't dead. He has, what?, a 1/10,000 chance of dying in office."

I think 1/10,000 are the odds of McCain dying in his first week in office - and that's not even accounting for his extensive personal medical history.

[NJB]

ahem. oh dear. okay 1/7 chance of dying within the 4 year mandate. statistically speaking.
ah hell, statistics, schmatistics...McCain is a vigorous 70-something year old and can still kick Putin's ass. He might bug out with his senior moments and mistake Sackashvashvilli for Putin, but...the point is he's still alive and kicking.