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shakran, I'm really surprised at your take on Palin's newspaper response given your knowledge about political maneuvering. No one really believes she doesn't ready *anything* do they? But if her campaign is rallying troops with the "elite media" bugle then it's damn hard to then say, well I read the New York Time and Washington Post every morning while eating my eggs and toast and a heap of trade articles for a few hours in the office each day.
I think what we saw was political inexperience. The lack of knowledge of the "correct" answer at the national level. It's much easier to appease a fairly homogeneous population. But when you know that there are unknown constituents out there, and that whatever your answer is going to be is going to be rebroadcasted to people you don't know what angers or appeases them, and the so-called knowledge pool running the campaign are telling you to keep unvetted answers to yourself, then you get someone who is unable to muster a rational response regardless of intelligence.
She was overprepped in her debates and interviews. The few times she "gaffed" (vs. not coming up with a suitable answer) were because on follow-ups she started to use her reasoning abilities and came up with answers that were internally consistent but inconsistent with her campaign's position. The campaign was the inconsistent entity, however, probably because he had to try and differentiate himself from both Bush and Obama as difficult as it is to do both at the same time consistently. What we saw is that when the two of them dropped the charade, they started to be appreciated for what they were. McCain's brand and Palin's accessability are huge political assets. They might lose millions of the more divisive identity politics subscribers, which would likely cost them votes necessary to win until they can carve into the moderate issues, but the votes they kept would be Obama-ish voters...ones that are excited and willing to stand at the polls and rallies for hours upon hours. In that sense, I think they would have deeper and stronger support, but they'd need to broaden it to win a national election in the future (in theory; in reality, I can't see McCain running for president again).
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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