I hope she got up from the foreign policy session and said to her aides, “Dammit. That wasn’t good enough and I’m not letting it happen again. I’m not going to allow myself to be so under-prepared for another high-profile interview again.” ~Rich Lowry

Via Ross

Then again, she might take the approach that George Bush did towards press conferences in his days as a candidate and early in his Presidency: avoid them like the plague.  Back then, his handlers recognized that public speaking was his weakness and so they made sure that he did so only on their terms, and it wouldn’t be shocking if they handle Palin in a similar fashion.  Meanwhile, all of the people flacking for Palin and insisting that it makes no difference whether she knows certain things aren’t doing her any favors.  Indeed, the obvious lowering of standards for Palin is exactly the kind of thing that would be considered disrespectful and condescending if it were being done by her critics.  Some conservative pundits and bloggers are not just showing partisan loyalty in their defense of her, but are actually demeaning Palin by making excuses for her in such a way as if to admit that she really is an unqualified diversity hire.  Whatever my other criticisms, I have enough respect for Sarah Palin to hold her to a high standard, and more than a few of her defenders should be embarrassed by their instinct to explain away her performance.  If anything, her defenders are sending the message to her that real Americans don’t need to know policy details–it’s just those pretentious media and Washington elites who care about this “policy” stuff, so it doesn’t matter.  (As a purely electoral matter, it’s probably true that the average voter is not as concerned about some of these things as I am, but demonstrating competence is important to a great many voters.)  One can only hope that she is smart and serious enough to ignore the ridiculous cheering section on her side and take some criticism.

We should bear in mind that prior to the Gibson interview her critics were complaining about the limited media access and regarded her giving one major interview to be insufficient, but for the most part Gibson did enough to put our concerns about how she would be questioned to rest.  Right now her supporters are breathing sighs of relief that she just had to make it through this one.  It didn’t help her cause at the time that Gibson kept introducing the program as the interview, which gave the exchange far more significance than it would have had if she had been doing one of these every day since she had been nominated.  The thing that is perhaps most troubling for Palin supporters is that her answers in the interview on most every subject were not that much more detailed or elaborate than the things she said in her announcement speech or in her convention speech, and her delivery was halting and nervous in a way that bodes very ill for the VP debate, which takes place in just 19 days.  There was some new ground on foreign policy, yes, but her answers scarcely went beyond the talking point level, and on economic policy and the budget I don’t think she could have said any less without simply repeating the phrase “finding efficiencies in agencies” in a continuous loop.  What should bother Palin supporters is how little new information there was and how small a difference being ensconced for a week with McCain’s advisors seems to have made.  

Then consider what will await her in future interviews, and just imagine how painful it would have been to watch her go on Meet the Press when Russert was still hosting.  Her supporters, especially those who are honest enough to acknowledge how poorly she did, should be furious with McCain for doing this to a woman they admire.