Palin Perfect for Fox News: Glamour With No Need for Smarts

This former newspaper reporter would love to ask Sarah Palin a few questions that others have not. It seemed to me that she is the sort of person who devotes full attention to the responsibility at hand and doesn't think much about what's beyond the person's span of control. As someone focused on Alaskan problems and solutions for years, and as governor of the state, she concentrated on Alaska (and her family) and paid scant attention to the minutiae of foreign policy issues, though she had to be aware of them. (It's likely that, as a former journalism student, she was disposed to read newspapers and as governor, likely read at least four daily, the ones serving Wasilla, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau.

Charles Gibson's query on the Bush Doctrine was one of those minutiae moments. But, as Charles Krauthammer has written, Mr. Gbison and other leftists got the matter wrong, not Ms. Palin. Mr. Krauthammer counted four Bush Doctrines, and the one that Mr. Gibson cited, the right of "anticipatory self-defense," was not the then-current "doctrine."

When Katie Couric queried her, Ms. Palin was noticeably irritated and unwilling to cooperate. E.g., the query about what newspapers she read. Of course she read newspapers. She had to. But would anyone else be asked that question? She erred, however, in letting her anger get the better of her. Lesson doubtless learned. Ditto with a query on Supreme Court decisions she did not like. She did not name one: She had traveled to Washington as governor to weigh in on a ruling that involved the damages to e awarded to the Prince William Sound area re: the Exxon Valdez oil spill. And she could not and did not like the subsequent ruling cutting the damages award.

I am chary of resorting to name-calling. But Ms. Erbe does not demonstrate much in the way of intelligence or wise observation, but much nastiness--regrettably, typical of leftists.

Alfred J. Lemire of MA 11:08AM January 14, 2010