A fine idea — in fact, a majority of HA readers agree that she should wait until 2016 — but that would put her on a collision course with Jindal, and I’m far from convinced that match-up favors her.

I’m not so sure about the match-up favoring Jindal. First, let me state that I like Jindal a lot. I think he’s awesome — exorcism and all (and as a cradle Catholic, let me say that Catholic converts like Jindal and Ingraham and Kudlow–and the list could go on and on–are our finest).

But, as Robert Stacy McCain famously put it:

Swing voters are notoriously superficial. They believe they can judge a man’s fitness for office by watching him talk on TV. This fact frustrates politicians who don’t look good talking on TV, but it’s true.

The president is a television character, and the voters are casting agents.

As RSM noted, this year we ran “Don Rickles/Tim Conway” against “Will Smith/Lawrence Fishburne” (though I disagree with the great RSM on that point. I think Obama was more “Sidney Poiters”).

I love Jindal, but let’s face it — the man looks like Alfalfa from “Our Gang”. There’s a charisma gap. Palin is a personality made for glossy magazine covers. In fact, the Madison Avenue crowd, though as liberal as can be, are secretly sad that she’s gone back to the Land of the Midnight Sun. She was a marketing gold mine — a veritable Klondike Gold Rush.

I hate to sound so superficial, but them’s the breaks. The electorate is superficial. It’s no coincidence that our most successful conservative politician was also a movie star. We should be grateful that Palin is a solid conservative.

And, yes, AP, she is a conservative. It’s not just wishful thinking among Palinistas. I don’t hold TARP against her. We all thought the sky was falling if they didn’t pass it pronto. The folks at National Review, which is arguably the premier conservative publication, were split on it, and more of them were for it than against it. We were all in the same situation as Palin, and we all were bitten. But, as the ‘Cuda said, “One bitten, twice shy.”

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 6:31 PM

As an Australian I’m interested in Sarah’s foreign policy positions. When are we likely hear anything from Sarah about that? I hope she is not another neocon as far as foreign policy is concerned.

Crux Australis on December 22, 2008 at 6:34 PM

I don’t think she is a neocon, though some neocons like her. Palin is much more libertarian in her approach to government. In fact, during the primaries the only candidate that Palin gave enthusiastic impromptu praise for was Ron Paul. I’m not suggesting that she would agree with him on everything, but she is certainly sympathetic to his libertarian ideals for limited government and respect for the Constitution. In fact, the Ron Paul supporters believed that she would have been an ideal running mate for him if by some miracle he had won the nomination.

I got the distinct sense from Palin’s pre-McCain campaign interviews that she is not interested in an uber-interventionist foreign policy. See here at 19:45 into the interview and here at 3:43 into the interview. Now you may suggest that she has now been turned into a neo-con podperson after the McCain aides have force fed past issues of the Weekly Standard down her throat, but I don’t think so because she is the only candidate who made the clear connection between our energy policy and our wars. That counts for a lot in my book. See here for proof at 3:44 into the video.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 6:47 PM

it was just one interview with telemundo for crying out loud.

rwoodward6 on December 22, 2008 at 6:23 PM

And she wasn’t even very specific in that interview.

When Laura Ingraham met Palin long before she was a vp candidate, Laura said that Palin was against the amnesty stuff. In fact, Laura confirmed what Mark Levin declared — Palin is “one of us”. Having Rush, Levin, Ingraham, Hannity, Beck, and Coulter certify your conservative credentials is no small matter.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 6:53 PM

Personally, although Palin definitely has great charisma, particularly before a large crowd, I think Jindal performs very well in one-on-one interviews. I suspect he would do better on the all important (to some) Meet the Press venues.

And there you have it. Palin is extraordinary in front of crowds. I’ve never seen a candidate who could work a crowd better and that includes Reagan. She has the ability to make people feel as if she’s speaking just them in a sort of “okay, guys, let me tell ya what the deal is” sort of way. It’s remarkable and powerful and that’s why the left wants to make sure she never gets the chance to use it again in a presidential campaign. The smart leftists spread lies about her, the stupid ones believe the lies and think she’s dumb.

Does anyone happen to have video footage of Reagan giving “Meet the Press” type interviews? I don’t recall him doing that sort of thing. I believe that he appeared on the Tonight Show, but not when he was president.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 7:05 PM

joey24007 on December 22, 2008 at 8:23 PM

They need a conservative newspaper up. How can such a red state not have a conservative newspaper?

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 8:27 PM

Reading the troll comments at Human Events made once again consider how divergent the public perception of Palin is from the woman herself.

Take for example the notion that she doesn’t read the newspaper. People joke about her “all of them, any of them” comment to Couric. Well, according to this, she does seem to read “all of them” (except the WashPost).

Kaylene Johnson’s Palin bio noted:

Sarah had two childhood traits that her family says played trajectory roles in her life. From the time she was in elementary school, she consumed newspapers with a passion. “She read the paper from the very top left hand corner to the bottom right corner to the very last page,” said Molly. “She didn’t want to miss a word. She didn’t just read it — she knew every word she had read and analyzed it.”

Sarah preferred nonfiction to the Nancy Drew books that her classmates were reading. In junior high school, Heather — a year older in school — often enlisted Sarah’s help with book reports. “She was such a bookworm. Whenever I was assigned to read a book, she’d already read it,” Heather said.

Please note that this bio was published long before the Couric interview. Long before the Couric interview people were commenting on Palin’s photographic memory and fondness for reading newspapers and books. I think her answer to Couric’s newspaper question was flippant because Palin was clearly offended by it. I I was offended by it too. It was as if Couric was asking her, “do you know how to read?” Palin has written op-eds for the NY Times and was quite fond of writing op-eds and letters to the editors of major newspapers long before she became governor of her state.

There is another odd little fact about her personality which doesn’t fit in with the public perception of her: she has been described by almost everyone who knew her growing up as shy and reserved. They also say that she was self-disciplined, determined, goal oriented, unflinchingly upbeat and positive, and even a natural leader, but also shy and an unassuming.

Her old high school basketball coach had this to say about her:

“We called her Little Sarah. She was sort of a quiet type person, but she was really a competitor and wanted to do her best in anything she went to do,” said Jerry [Russell, her basketball coach].

Jerry says Sarah Heath was usually timid, but he remembers a time when he put Sarah on the bench for not doing as she was told.

“And she turned around and looked at me, and said, ‘You’re always telling us that if we see the opportunity to score, to take it, and that’s what I did, so put me back in.’ It was so out of character for her, I had to turn my head because I just couldn’t keep from laughing,” Jerry said.

[…]

But he says Sarah became more outgoing in high school, even becoming known at “Sarah Barracuda” on the basketball team, and her team went on to win the state championship.
“She played that game on a fractured ankle,” said Jerry.

Palin’s husband told Greta Van Susteren that his wife was shy in high school and not someone he would have pictured having a political career.

During her college years:

Friends described her as a serious, unassuming student who showed only brief flashes of the outsized political personality that would one day emerge.

“She wasn’t out to get attention,” said Michelle Carney Overstreet, a hometown friend and classmate at the University of Idaho. “She kept to herself.”

Her friends did discover that she had one extraordinary talent:

[Her longtime friend Kim] Ketchum discovered there that Palin was a natural in front of a camera, a quality that helped her land her first post-college job as a weekend sports reporter at an Anchorage television station. For a journalism class, they videotaped themselves giving a 30-minute speech for classmates to critique.

“She didn’t have the kind of fear most kids would have had,” Ketchum said. “I could barely handle it.”

They also noted this:

Palin was a calming presence who offered to pray for her when [college classmate Stacia Crocker] Hagerty had boyfriend troubles. “She was so ’steady Eddie,’ so rock solid,” Hagerty said. “She didn’t make a big deal out of things like other people did. She talked about politics and history and what was going on in the world. I was like, whatever, I don’t care about that stuff.” [emphasis added]

It would appear that she was always “intellectually curious.”

Fred Barnes noted this in an article on Palin:

Another Republican (a Palin admirer) told me that in a room of 20 women, you’d never pick out Palin as the one who’s the elected governor. “She doesn’t stand out in a group the way Reagan did,” the Republican said. “But when she goes into these places [for campaign rallies], it’s different. She’s got this extra thing.”

It seems that our media-driven perception of this woman is totally divergent from the real Sarah Palin.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 8:51 PM

Jim62sch on December 22, 2008 at 8:52 PM

Reading the troll comments at Human Events made once again consider how divergent the public perception of Palin is from the woman herself.

Take for example the notion that she doesn’t read the newspaper. People joke about her “all of them, any of them” comment to Couric. Well, according to this, she does seem to read “all of them” (except the WashPost).

Kaylene Johnson’s Palin bio noted:

Sarah had two childhood traits that her family says played trajectory roles in her life. From the time she was in elementary school, she consumed newspapers with a passion. “She read the paper from the very top left hand corner to the bottom right corner to the very last page,” said Molly. “She didn’t want to miss a word. She didn’t just read it — she knew every word she had read and analyzed it.”

Sarah preferred nonfiction to the Nancy Drew books that her classmates were reading. In junior high school, Heather — a year older in school — often enlisted Sarah’s help with book reports. “She was such a bookworm. Whenever I was assigned to read a book, she’d already read it,” Heather said.

Please note that this bio was published long before the Couric interview. Long before the Couric interview people were commenting on Palin’s photographic memory and fondness for reading newspapers and books. I think her answer to Couric’s newspaper question was flippant because Palin was clearly offended by it. I I was offended by it too. It was as if Couric was asking her, “do you know how to read?” Palin has written op-eds for the NY Times and was quite fond of writing op-eds and letters to the editors of major newspapers long before she became governor of her state.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 8:55 PM

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 9:07 PM

Sorry for the doubt multiple duplicate posts! God, I feel like an idiot tonight. It’s the Christmas season folks. Be kind and forgiving.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 9:11 PM

joey24007 on December 22, 2008 at 9:15 PM

I was just watching this lecture Jonah Goldberg gave on his book “Liberal Fascism”. The use of religion by the left to sell their nonsense.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 9:34 PM

Snowed In on December 22, 2008 at 9:59 PM

I’m still amazed that anyone could have misunderstood Coulter’s comments. But then, go read the troll comments at Human Events. Some are truly amusing — like the guy who wrote a disparaging comment about Alaska, and then listed his location as Alaska. There are suddenly so many posters on these websites who are “from Alaska”. Amazing that a state with a population of less than 700,000 has so many citizens posting on so many websites.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 10:05 PM

upinak on December 22, 2008 at 10:07 PM

No, actually, Obama said:

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

In fact, you can hear him say it here.

I can’t imagine that Sarah Palin gave the same speech with the same gaffe.

ramrocks on December 22, 2008 at 10:13 PM