This one time, at debate camp....
Sarah Palin is off to debate camp at John McCain's "rustic" Arizona home. Or one of them, anyway. She's already been holed up in a Philadelphia hotel since last week, also preparing for the debate which, presumably, is why she wasn't out defending her running mate after his debate even though her counterpart, Joe Biden, was on the air within moments of its end. At least, I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was practically MIA so she could prep and not because the McCain campaign is scared to death to let her out on her own facing another unscripted moment.
Aides are saying she needs extra time to get up to speed on foreign policy stuff. "It's really hard," said one debate advisor. I'm sure it is. Added Guy Smiley Mitt Romney: "Look, she wasn't selected by John McCain because she's an expert on foreign policy; John McCain's the expert on foreign policy. She was selected because she's a maverick."
Fair enough. Part of the reason Obama picked Joe Biden is because he shores up Obama's lack of foreign policy experience.
But I worry about how far behind Palin is. How much foreign policy prep could she need? The two interviews and infomercial she's done have exposed glaring holes in her knowledge of the world around us. I'm just some schmuck buried in the windowless bowels of a state capitol editing hosannas to Eagle Scouts, but even I know what the Bush Doctrine is. I know Kim Jong Il might be sick and that he's started up his country's nuclear program again. I know it's the mullahs of Iran who really run things over there, not the blowhard president with the harder to spell than pronounce name. I'm well aware that the Wild West that is Waziristan could be the flashpoint that topples the newly-elected "democracy" of a nuclear Pakistan that is always on the brink of war with our nuclear Customer Service Center in Bangalore.
How hard is it to learn a few specifics of your party's presidential candidate's policy positions? If I wanted someone to get back to me on that, I'd call the cable company's CSR in Bangalore. No self-respecting journalist is going to pull some sort of gotcha move and ask a vice presidential candidate to identify the foreign minister of Bhutan. (His name is Yeshey Dorji.)
Here are the foreign countries/threats/concerns Sarah Palin needs to know: Russia, Georgia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Sudan. Maybe impress everybody and throw in Myanmar and Somalia.
That's it. It's not like any of these are new problems, with the exception of Georgia. Most of those can be combined into one answer anyway. Stay on the path. Don't extemporize. Find a couple of bullet points and ride those to respectability. Keep it simple, Stupid.
Aides are saying she needs extra time to get up to speed on foreign policy stuff. "It's really hard," said one debate advisor. I'm sure it is. Added Guy Smiley Mitt Romney: "Look, she wasn't selected by John McCain because she's an expert on foreign policy; John McCain's the expert on foreign policy. She was selected because she's a maverick."
Fair enough. Part of the reason Obama picked Joe Biden is because he shores up Obama's lack of foreign policy experience.
But I worry about how far behind Palin is. How much foreign policy prep could she need? The two interviews and infomercial she's done have exposed glaring holes in her knowledge of the world around us. I'm just some schmuck buried in the windowless bowels of a state capitol editing hosannas to Eagle Scouts, but even I know what the Bush Doctrine is. I know Kim Jong Il might be sick and that he's started up his country's nuclear program again. I know it's the mullahs of Iran who really run things over there, not the blowhard president with the harder to spell than pronounce name. I'm well aware that the Wild West that is Waziristan could be the flashpoint that topples the newly-elected "democracy" of a nuclear Pakistan that is always on the brink of war with our nuclear Customer Service Center in Bangalore.
How hard is it to learn a few specifics of your party's presidential candidate's policy positions? If I wanted someone to get back to me on that, I'd call the cable company's CSR in Bangalore. No self-respecting journalist is going to pull some sort of gotcha move and ask a vice presidential candidate to identify the foreign minister of Bhutan. (His name is Yeshey Dorji.)
Here are the foreign countries/threats/concerns Sarah Palin needs to know: Russia, Georgia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Sudan. Maybe impress everybody and throw in Myanmar and Somalia.
That's it. It's not like any of these are new problems, with the exception of Georgia. Most of those can be combined into one answer anyway. Stay on the path. Don't extemporize. Find a couple of bullet points and ride those to respectability. Keep it simple, Stupid.