Palin, SNL, and comedy

The problem with Sarah Palin's SNL cameo last weekend (I call it a cameo because she did so little, unlike, say, Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani have done in their appearances on the show) isn't just that she was a prop, it's that she didn't commit to being a prop. Take, for instance, the Palin rap song Amy Poehler did during Weekend Update. A VP candidate singing a rap? Funny. A VP candidate announcing she's not singing a rap because it's inappropriate for someone in her position? Also funny. A VP candidate announcing she's not singing a rap because it's inappropriate for someone in her position, but then (and I shudder to type these words) raising the roof and doing the white man's overbite while someone else sings the rap? Not very funny.

You've got to commit. As Doctor Cox explains around 1:42 of this clip:

Overcoached

Everyone probably has their own Sarah Palin debate WTF moment. Mine was her list of people supporting McCain -- Lieberman, Giuliani, Romney, Lingle. That's exactly what she said, those last names, without first names or any sort of context or story behind them. People probably know who Lieberman is, and most folks know Giuliani. Nobody knows Romney unless they were really paying attention to the primary campaign that he left in, what, February? And Lingle? Who the hell is Lingle? I am as hardcore a campaign junkie as you will find and it took me a minute to realize she meant Linda Lingle, the Governor of Hawaii, and not my undergrad political parties professor (who I can't imagine would be supporting McCain).

I almost wonder if she knew who she was talking about.

Decline and faceplant

Watching the ongoing train wreck that is the Sarah Palin candidacy, I have to wonder: Has any other VP nominee gone from Muskie to Quayle in such a short period of time?

Time horizons

Roughly put, a time horizon is how far ahead one is planning: Next year, next quarter, next month. An important part of growing up is learning to think in terms of longer time horizons: You can't control what happens this week, but you can make long-term plans that will endure whatever roadblocks flare up. You can also avoid making short-term plans that will hurt you later: If I eat a third helping of dessert, it will taste good now but I'll feel sick later. If I buy that expensive thing I don't need, I'll enjoy playing with it but I won't be able to pay the rent. That sort of thing.

Looking at the McCain campaign, I'm pretty sure we've got a potential president whose time horizon goes to lunchtime tomorrow, tops. It's clear McCain had no endgame for his phony campaign suspension, he simply wanted to grab a bunch of headlines that afternoon. Same thing applies to Sarah Palin: No need to vet her record, the important thing is to pick somebody dramatic! And then that dramatic pick can't match wits with Katie Couric. But, hey, who can think as far ahead as three weeks from the announcement?

Palin the polar bear?

WaPo's Ruth Marcus on the under-noticed Sarah Palin-Sean Hannity interview:

The way she answers questions brings to mind -- I have Alaska on the brain, admittedly -- the image of a polar bear, jumping from rhetorical ice floe to ice floe, drifting some but eventually managing to get safely to dry land. No flubs, but you get the sense that she could plunge into the icy water at any moment. Palin has an odd tendency to use the same word twice in a sentence, as in, “The people of American realize that inherently all political power is inherent in the people,” or, about John McCain, “He can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.” Or, combining word repetition with another Palin verbal tic, word dropping, this about the economic meltdown: “Well, you know, first Fannie and Freddie, different because quasi-government agencies there where government had to step in because the adverse impact all across our nation, especially with homeowners, is just too impacting.”

Too impacting? Are Fannie and Freddie wisdom teeth?

Palin thoughts, serious and otherwise

In no real order:

• As the father of a daughter, I applaud any breaking of the glass ceilings in our society. I am glad that a mediocre female politician has been given the same opportunity that a mediocre male politician would have had in the past.
  
• Palin is not really supposed to appeal to disaffected Clinton supporters or women; she's intended to appeal to the hardcore theocratic right-wing faction of the Republican party. These are the folks who have always been suspicious of or hostile to McCain, and he'd be certain to lose if they stayed home in appreciable numbers on November 4. The question now is whether Palin, who among other things is a creationist, tried to ban books as mayor, is lying about her opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere" (she was for it before it was convenient for her to be against it), abused her office seeking payback against an estranged relative, and more, is sufficiently nutty as to alienate voters in the middle of the political spectrum.
  
• I suspect she is; in 2004, rallying the base was enough for Bush to eke out a narrow win over Kerry, but that base -- and Republican identification among the electorate -- is much smaller now than it was four years ago.
  
• As Lance notes, it is a mistake to assume Palin is a lightweight. On the other hand, I cannot listen to her without recalling Stuart's mom offering Beavis and Butt-head breakfast burritos.
  
• Imagine for a second that the Obamas had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter. Now imagine the right-wing freakout over it. Go ahead. Get back to me when you stop screaming for it to stop.
  
• I really figured that Tagg was going to be the weirdest candidate's child's name in 2008.