I’m actually feeling pretty tired this afternoon, so I’m not going to go on at much length.
As usual, we start with Gov. Palin — though I must confess that, after a while, flogging a dead horse becomes fatiguing. Rumbles continue to rumble over her disastrous Couric interview. It’s been suggested that the problem is that Palin should never have tried to bluff her way through it, instead answering any “expertise” questions with folksy charm and character. It certainly couldn’t have hurt worse, but after having seen Senator McCain trying the disarming, “Well, I don’t know as much about the economy as I should” routine, it might have raised alarm bells — especially after weeks of touting Sarah Palin as the most highly qualified VP candidate of the last century.
On which point, the whole “I’m a foreign policy wonk because, jeez, look, we deal with Russia all the time up here” would have a scosh more believability if, for example, you hadn’t been cutting back state support and representation at Arctic nation conferences, or declined an actual invitation to a conference held in Russia during your brief gubernatorial tenure. Might have actually earned some of that per diem …
I guess she was too busy “working the numbers” in favor of justifying aerial wolf hunting.
Oh, well, don’t worry, Sarah. After the election’s over, maybe you can get a Disney movie made about you.
Over with her running mate — yeesh. Early word yesterday was that there was a deal in the offing about the $700bn to Nowhere. Congressional negotiators of both parties were busy waving off McCain, suggesting that his deep economic expertise wasn’t needed and that politicizing the affair by bringing in the presidential candidates would only lead to more posturing and political maneuvering.
So, of course, McCain headed for DC, and then Bush invited him and Obama and the head negotiators in for an attempt to look relevant a photo op the chance to meet at the White House. And immediately, the whole thing fell through with a bang. The GOP reps brought forward their own minimalist plan, that didn’t make anyone — Bush, Paulson, or the Democrats — happy. McCain remained studiously disengaged in the debate, not endorsing much of anything (which leads one to wonder why he even showed up).
And, after all that, and without any deal in hand (the whole sine qua non for why McCain suggested that the debate be put off), it seems that McCain has agreed to the debate tonight. Maybe. Believe it when you see it.
And so it goes.