Palin Comparison

Look, I have to qualify my political views every time I post something of this nature, so here’s my usual pre-amble (or some such paraphrasing):

I don’t support either of the two major parties, so don’t think my writing about one candidate or another means I support another candidate more or less than the other.

All that to lead into me linking to two parts of Katy Couric’s interviews with VP candidate Sarah Palin. Now while I believe good speaking abilities are helpful to an elected official, I hardly believe they factor into decision-making capabilities, so I’ll give the governor a pass on her stilted responses. But I can’t give her a pass on the content of her responses; you cannot blame sputtering speech on the claim that governing a state that happens to reside between Russia and Canada gives you foreign policy experience. You can’t blame her lack of verbal agility on making up a B.S. answer about McCain’s market reform efforts on the first pass only to essentially say she has no answer the second time around (“I’ll try to find some and I’ll bring ‘em too ya”).

In short, this debacle of an interview is no Dan Quayle spelling mistake.

I think it’s pretty hard to find any antagonism in Couric’s questioning, either. The toughest she gets, if you can call it such, is to repeat a question that Palin didn’t answer. Maybe she interrupts, but that’s par for the course with political interviews. There are times where Couric contradicts Palin’s answers, but it’s to bring up facts or claims which contradict the candidate’s responses.

I don’t offer this as a reason to vote for Obama. It hasn’t changed my mind one bit. But dang…there’s no doubt about whether I’ll vote for the Republican ticket, either.