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Palin Interview Mysteries Solved
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(AP Photo/Paul Vernon)
"CBS Evening News" aired the final excerpts of Katie Couric's interviews with Sarah Palin last night, and the Alaska governor's performance answering questions about the Supreme Court are as shaky as advertised.
The Republican vice presidential candidate did not name one specific Supreme Court decision she disagreed with.
"There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but...."
"Can you think of any?" Couric asked, cutting Palin off.
"Well, I could think of... any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today."
This afternoon, MSNBC aired footage of Palin pronouncing herself "very, very disappointed" with the Supreme Court's June ruling slashing punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.
Asked why Palin didn't just name the Exxon decision, Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton told MSNBC, "I think what she's doing is she leaps ahead and anticipates the next question. She is very familiar with [the Exxon decision] and I think she just starts getting into, 'OK, so I bring up Exxon, what's next?' and then I think she starts getting into this battle in the weeds. So I think she is working her hardest to answer the questions at the same time that she is also jumping ahead and jumping to the next question before she's answering the first."
(Does this make Palin a psychic, then?)
Palin also had an awkward moment with Couric when asked what newspapers the former sports reporter reads.
"I've read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media," Palin said. When asked to name the specific publications she reads, Palin said, "All of 'em. Any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years. I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news. Alaska isn't a foreign country."
Stapleton said today that again, Palin was "leaping ahead to the next question," and that she didn't want to "name names at the risk of causing more controversy.
Had Palin answered Couric's question, Stapleton said, the media would have asked, "Well do you know so-and-so works there, well do you know so-and-so owns that paper? And it becomes this much larger issue than just simply, 'What do you read and why do you read it?'"
Stapleton said she had witnessed Palin reading such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Weekly Standard, and an array of Alaska newspapers.
It's unclear why Palin didn't just say so during the Couric interview, since the point wasn't so much what Palin reads, but whether Palin reads at all. President Bush admitted he is briefed on newspaper reports and rarely reads them himself -- something for which he's been widely mocked.
Couric's question wasn't so much about assuring the media or general voting public about Palin's intellectual curiosity. Rather, Palin could have assuaged conservatives who've begun to worry about her qualifications. It was a missed opportunity, but tonight she will have many moments to make up for it.
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