Why more briefings won’t help Sarah Palin

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Adam Nagourney has a good story in the New York Times about growing Republican fears that Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, is going to crash and burn in Thursday’s debate with Democrat Joe Biden.

Palin flew to her running mate John McCain’s Arizona ranch yesterday to begin three days of intense debate preparations. Will she be ready?

Given Palin’s abysmal performance in her recent interview with Katie Couric of CBS, I seriously doubt it. She just doesn’t seem like she has given any thought to major issues in economics and foreign policy, ever, and the “gibberish” she utters when forced off her talking points shows it painfully. Nor does she appear to have the base of knowledge necessary to absorb the briefings she is being so desperately given — something that takes years, not days, to acquire. And that’s why this automated computer script (thanks, Andrew) sounds about as intelligible as Palin does. It’s why Saturday Night Live could use actual quotes to mock the Alaska governor in a comedy sketch.

As the Atlantic‘s James Fallows, an Obama supporter, put it after seeing Palin speak with Couric about foreign policy, “After thirty years of meeting and interviewing politicians, I can think of exactly three people who sounded as uninformed and vacant as this. All are now out of office. One was a chronic drunk.” The average reader of USA Today would do better, frankly.

I’m sorry if this sounds unduly partisan, folks, but I have to call it like I see it. McCain is a great hero, he has done some good things in the Senate, and he might make a wonderful president. But if he wins, he damn well better stay alive.