Let Sarah Be Sarah!

September 26, 2008

Let Sarah Be Sarah!
This is absurd.

I have seen Sarah Palin speak. I have seen Sarah Palin debate. I have seen Sarah Palin give news conferences and take press questions.

The woman running with McCain is not that Sarah Palin.

The one I am familiar with is articulate, bright, witty ... and totally unafraid.

The one that McCain’s handlers are trotting out to regurgitate memorized talking points that they have been cramming in her head until thinking becomes impossible ... is not articulate, bright nor witty. And they’ve got her scared to death. I’m quite sure she is not scared of Katie Couric or Charles Gibson or Sean Hannity. And she is definitely not scared of reporters.

I am convinced that McCain’s handlers (who didn’t want her on the ticket to start with and have been more negative towards her candidacy than Obama’s camp) have decided that she is to say approved phrases and nothing else so she is desperately attempting to memorize stupid approved lines, some of which she has no real understanding of what they mean.

Sarah is doing this because she is afraid all right. She is afraid of not doing a good job for her boss. She is afraid of letting down "the great man" John McCain.

So she tries to do what she is told and as a result we are seeing a caricature of the real Palin.

Senator McCain: If you had the guts to roll the dice and choose Sarah, have the guts to live with your decision and let her be Sarah!

What do you have to lose John? You're going to lose the election if you don't. Your only chance to win it is to let her loose. Just like your only chance to win it a month ago was to choose her. You made the right choice once. If you want a shot at this job ... you have to make the right choice again.

Your handlers are making a laughingstock out of her! Turn her loose!

Let the lady rip! She can turn an interviewer upside down and have them so confused they can’t remember their middle names. If she doesn’t understand something ... the worst thing for her to have to do is to try to rummage through the list of approved "talking points" that the handlers have made her memorize.

McCain had the guts and the vision to choose someone who could have pulled him across the finish line ahead of Obama ... but by letting his handlers take over again he has shown his lack of confidence in her which just contributes to her "trying harder" to please by sticking to the script like a good little girl.

News Flash!!! John McCain ... are you listening? You need to be or you are going to lose this election. Sarah Palin is not a good little girl! [Which has nothing to do with her religious beliefs or church attendance or protecting herself from witchcraft!]

Sarah smoked dope. She was pregnant before she got around to getting married. I’d bet dollars to donuts that Todd wasn’t the first and only either. She can use ... potent ... language when it is called for. And ... check just a little into basketball history [I’m older than Sarah but our schools play Wasilla; both when I played basketball and when my daughter was the team captain for her team. My daughter was on a team that won a state title too. Sarah’s high school basketball career was between that of myself and my daughter so, to the best of my knowledge and memory I don’t recall actually seeing Sarah play.]

But there are two kinds of basketball players. Those who use elbows and those who don’t. There is a perception that Sarah Barracuda [which was not a basketball nickname for her despite what the image makers want you to believe] was one who used her elbows. That perception turns out to be correct. She also played on sprained ankles and pulled her team to a state championship even when she was personally having a lousy game. She did it by force of will and by powerful leadership. And sharp elbows. She is a street fighter and a fierce competitor.

The lady plays to win.

In fact ... look at all the folks in Alaska or from Alaska (and I include Senator Stevens in this) who are in jail or under indictment or soon will be ... solely because Sarah has no fear and plays to win (and has sharp elbows)!

She is, however, that remarkable combination of sharp elbows and genuine smiles that is so rare and so effective that she could win runner-up Miss Alaska ... and by essential unanimity claim the Miss Congeniality title at the same competition.

I watched the Couric interview where she got tangled up. Yeah, so maybe she should have knocked off the smoking dope before the interview.

Well, I'm sure she didn't, but there were times that seemed the most reasonable explanation. Because she did muff her lines in a couple places in the Couric interview. Embarrassingly. Even at that she hasn’t said anything close to as dumb as the stuff Biden has been spouting off. FDR and all those televised talks with the American people were so forgettable that only Joe remembers them. In fact, Joe is the only one who knows that television had been invented back then! That must have been during the time that he and Al Gore were inventing the Internet. Can you imagine the flack if Sarah had said something so dumb?

Have you watched Obama speak lately? The day after Sarah’s speech to the GOP convention he not only started smoking again ... he started stuttering again.

He even fumbled his lines when he did the "lipstick on a pig" speech. The fact is that Palin is being subjected to an entirely different set of criteria than any of the other three candidates.

Obama even stuttered during his "debate" with John McCain and he was just repeating his many times practiced talking points! He forgot the name of the soldier whose name was on the bracelet he was wearing! Talk about a gaffe! Talk about insulting to the soldier and looking like a fraud! But is he getting called on it? Not except by some "crazy right-wing" blogs. If Sarah had muffed something like that, every Campbell Brown in the media would have headlined their next story with how that shows that she simply isn't up to the big time!

Look. Sarah lacks experience on the national and international stage. She is also flat wrong (imho) on at least half of her politics. But that does not excuse holding her to a different standard than the other candidates. If the press and blogosphere started giving her a free pass on stuff that they were hammering Joe Biden on ... I'd complain about that too. But that isn't what is happening. Biden says 10 things a week dumber than anything Sarah has said yet. Obama is less experienced at anything relevant to the job he is running for than the vice presidential candidate of the opposition. And if the man doesn't have a teleprompter or a memorized line he can spout he can barely get a coherent sentence out. Back to the debate last night. CNN's nonsensical poll of (largely) Democrats that decided that Obama won aside [duh ... let's try the same poll of (largely) Republicans and see how it comes out] ... the man made Palin look like an accomplished speaker even in the Couric interview!

Actually, it was hard to call it a debate, though, when Obama tried to fly to the right of McCain and his response to multiple issues is to say "Senator McCain is absolutely right on that". By the time they were about half way through I thought he was going to endorse McCain!

Indeed, we now have an Obama who favors increasing domestic oil and gas production including offshore drilling. He favors building new nuclear power plants. He’s a convert to Star Wars. And he thinks the Iraq surge succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. [Uh, Barack? Senator McCain said those were his expectations back when no one else believed. His lonely voice was roundly ridiculed. The surge succeeded beyond Obama's wildest expectations, not McCain's. Does that say anything about judgment or suggest that a few decades of dealing with such issues might be useful?] Obama is now absolutely willing to use U.S. military intervention and indeed, thinks we should crank up the manpower and the war effort in Afghanistan.

Does anyone believe him? And if so ... why vote for someone with no experience and no relationship with the critical foreign leaders who wants to do the same thing that a man who is hugely respected throughout the world for 26 years of dealing with exactly these issues?

But I digress.

John. If you want to win this ... tell your handlers to start being obsequious to the next Vice President of the United States instead of condescending. And tell them to stop stuffing her head with talking points. Sure ... there is material she should study and folks can be helpful by pointing her in the right direction on issues that she needs to bone up on. But if your own staff treats her with condescension ... she is going to have a crisis of personal confidence. This is the last thing you need or want. You will make her failure into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let the lady have the ball. Let her take her sharp elbows and genuine smile ... and let her rock and roll. Tell her to unleash the Sarah that she’s always been and her remarkably quick intellect and biting wit will have reporters either eating out of her hand or looking extremely foolish. Turn her loose to go amongst them John! Let her hold press conferences until people suffer from Palin overload. The more they get to know her, the more impressed they will be. Trust me on this. You have to have the guts to believe in your own decisions. Do so!

I fear that I am more aware of the abilities and potential of your vice presidential selection than you are!

If you want to have a chance to win this thing, you have one chance and one chance only. Read my lips John: LET SARAH BE SARAH!