Speculation is growing that the among the real reasons behind McCain's stunt of bailing out of tomorrow's debate were these two: he had an immediate motivation for that day to distract the media from Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric, and had as a longer term goal the plan of eliminating the VP candidates' debate. One proposal being floated by the McCain camp is that tomorrow's debate be "rescheduled," to take place on 2 October, which is the planned date for … you guessed it.
Further clips from the Palin/Couric interview certainly don't knock such speculation down. Here's Palin on Israeil:
As an emailer to Andrew Sullivan noted in reaction to another part of the interview, "Those aren't talking points; they're babbling points."
Want more babble? Here's Palin on bin Laden and Afghanistan (pardon the annoying 20-second musical lead-in; I'll replace the clip if I come across another one):
Other Palin/Couric clips here, here, and here. I repeat these links because, as Steve Benen and Christopher Orr have noted, it's clear in some of those other clips that Palin frequently looks down, as though she's got notes in her lap. It's worth reviewing them to see this. Turn the sound off -- it makes it easier to pick up.
I can only imagine that the notes were written in crayon.
[Added] Just realized she looks down in the second clip at about 0:37, also. Did not help.
2 comments:
I have to give credit to our friend T. Ex for saying this to me right away. Right or wrong, I do think that once McCain did the Great Debate Bailout he immediately saw the added advantage of canceling Palin's debate with Biden.
I can imagine that after-the-fact rationalizations were likely for McCain himself, since he often act first, think later. I still suspect, however, that some of his top advisors had been brainstorming for weeks about ways to get her out of doing the debate, whether from seeing how the public reacted to her interviews or just from seeing firsthand how she was doing in prep.
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