Clueless Palin Peddles Cliches Under Gibson's Gla Commentary

Commentary by Jeremy Gerard

Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The question of experience came up again last
night: Was the man of the moment prepared for the difficult task at
hand? Did he have the chops?

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson got the get, the first mano- a-womano sit
down with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. He had
the chops.

Palin may not have blinked when John McCain asked her to be his running
mate. Last night, however, found her frozen in the Klieg lights as the
dogged interlocutor set his sights on his visitor.

Peering down at Palin through reading glasses set at the tip of his
nose, foot circling over knee ever more impatiently, Gibson, 65,
wouldn't let her coast. Yes, she had mastered the pronunciation of
Georgia president Mikhail Saakashvili's name, not to mention that of
Iran's Mahmud Ahmadinejad. And maybe that would have been good enough on
``Good Morning America.''

But no-one had coached her in something called the Bush Doctrine.
Doctrine? What doctrine would that be, Charlie?

Palin, 44, apparently never heard of the Bush Doctrine until yesterday.
She flashed a smile nearly as frozen as her running- mate's and did that
tenth-grader thing of tap-dancing around the question, skittishly ad
libbing her way with gibberish about Bush's ``global vision.''

Gibson was having none of it, pressing her for specifics she didn't have
at her command and finally -- his glare set to iceberg blue, foot
circling like a lasso -- he impatiently explained what the doctrine is,
when it was introduced, and gave her another chance to answer.

Few Overseas Trips

My sympathy for Palin lasted only as long as it took me to remember that
it was Palin who had insisted, at the top of the interview, that she's
ready to lead the country on a moment's notice. Asked whether she had
ever been outside the U.S. before her recent trip to the Middle East,
she answered, ``Canada. Mexico.'' Asked what heads of state she had
dealt with, she referenced all those trade delegations that came to
Alaska looking to do some business.

When the interview turned to Iraq and Iran, Palin's innocence of
diplomatic nuance, not to mention global politics, was something she
couldn't dance around. We're America, she said, we don't have to put up
with those uppity Eye-ranians.

Does she believe we are doing God's will in Iraq? ``I wouldn't presume
to know God's will, Charlie,'' she answered gamely. Gibson was ready
with a clip of her sermonizing not long ago in church and she danced
around that one, too.

Gibson didn't ask the candidate if she has any clue about the principle
of separation of church and state on which her beloved United States was
founded. I wish he had.

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed
are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Jeremy Gerard in New York at
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Last Updated: September 12, 2008 12:03 EDT