"A merely adequate performance"

I haven't seen more than a few snippets of the Palin interview, but Rich Lowry - of that radical left-wing journal, National Review - was underwhelmed:

Politically, everyone was grading her on a pass/fail, and she passed. No gaffes, not that much to fuel damaging follow-on conversation. She's likable even when she's at her least authoritative. Most people, I believe, are rooting for her, and she was helped in the post-game by the incredible scorn directed at her by Charlie Gibson. But this was a merely adequate performance. The foreign-policy session was a white-knuckle affair. She barely got through it and showed no knowledge more than an inch deep. ...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." Of course, she has a tremendous amount of material to master in a short period of time. What she has to do is the equivalent of Charlie Gibson or any of the rest of us having to answer questions about pipeline policy in Alaska on a moment's notice. I understand how we all want to be protective of her—I feel the same impulse—but let's not be patronizing. I believe the truly pro-Palin position is to think she can, should, and will do better than this.

Conservatives Ross Douthat and David Frum weren't particularly impressed, either. If the Obama camp can make people wonder whether Palin is ready to take over the Presidency - and, more importantly, get some of his "supporters" to STFU - he can probably turn this thing around.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at September 13, 2008 05:12 PM