Palin - Not Ready For Primetime

Last night Sarah Palin had her first of a couple interviews with Charlie Gibson on ABC, and it really revealed that she is not ready for prime-time, and why she has been kept away from the media.

I will admit that due to the nature of doing multiple interviews, and how the McCain campaign kept complaining about the media, that Charlie Gibson was going to soft ball the interview. I figured we were going to see a "Good Morning America" style interview, and while he was no attack dog, he did ask some very good strong questions.

Even so, Sarah Palin was not ready to do a sit down interview in front of a national audience. She was nervous, uninformed, green and generally not ready for the interview. She continually used stock phrases and cliche's instead of answering the question. It looked like she was answering memorized questions, and often, especially when she was answering Gibson's questions on Russia, was just following what Gibson said. He would say "Georgia" and she would answer, "Oh yes Georgia," he would say "Ukraine," and she would say "Oh yes Ukraine," there was little evidence she would have made the points if Gibson had not brought them up.

If you watch the whole interview you will see that Sarah Palin often repeated the same answers over and over again no matter the question, especially when she looked stumped. She showed little knowledge about how Iran is run, or what is happening in Pakistan, or about al-Qaeda, and even is ignorant of the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare. No matter how many times the McCain Campaign makes the claim, energy is not an answer to a question about her foriegn policy experience.

You can read the transcript here, though this does not convery the depth of the poor performance, the nervousness and halting way she often answered her questions. It was quite frankly a shockingly bad performance.

She is not ready to be Vice President.

The media has to push for more interviews. They cannot let this woman get into the White House without being vetted. Proximity of Alaska and Russia is not foriegn policy experience. Being from a state with oil is not foriegn policy experience. Threatening Russia is not good foriegn policy experience.