{"id":1887,"date":"2008-09-13T17:14:41","date_gmt":"2008-09-13T17:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-09-13T17:23:23","modified_gmt":"2008-09-13T17:23:23","slug":"palin_vs_the_ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1887","title":{"rendered":"Palin vs. The Editor’s Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, as things tend to do, I sat down to make notes for a post, did a little surfing, and found that matters are more complex than I’d started out believing.<\/p>\n

I started to write about the problem posed by an outsider – like Sarah Palin – who has political skills but much less policy knowledge. How do we know when too little policy knowledge is a problem? What’s the boundary, in other words, or is she Jesse Ventura?One of Bill Clinton’s great features was that he combined great political skills and deep policy knowledge – he could both talk about the history of an issue and rally people to act on it at a higher level than most politicians. What he was deficient in, to some extent, was judgment.<\/p>\n

Because what we want from our political leaders is a combination of things – the political skill to rally people to join them in solving a problem and to build the alliances needed to Get Things Done – that’s the core job; the policy skill to understand the mechanics of issues and how best to exercise their political skills; and, finally, the judgment needed to decide on what policies to further and what politics to engage in.<\/p>\n

I started to write about that, and about the legitimate concern that Palin may not be well-developed enough on the policy front to comfortably sit in the big chair in the Oval Office. I’ll come back and write about that some more (along with all the other things in the queue).<\/p>\n

But in surfing around this morning, I found the same Newsbusters post<\/a> that Glen Wishard linked to in the comments below, and fell into my usual high dudgeon about crappy, stupidly biased media. The parts they cut out are in bold<\/b>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

GIBSON: Let me ask you about some specific national security situations. <\/p>\n

PALIN: Sure. <\/p>\n

GIBSON: Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start, because we are near Russia, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start with Russia and Georgia. <\/p>\n

The administration has said we’ve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia? <\/p>\n

PALIN: First off, we’re going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 <\/p>\n

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked. <\/p>\n

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we have to keep an eye on Russia. <\/b><\/p>\n

And, Charlie, you’re in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. They’re very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor. <\/b><\/p>\n

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you? <\/p>\n

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska. <\/p>\n

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia? <\/b><\/p>\n

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along. <\/b><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know, it sure seems like the interview was edited to make Palin look far less thoughtful and knowledgeable than she really was.<\/p>\n

I’m tossing an email over to ABC News<\/a>, asking “what the hell?<\/i>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal is kinda bemused at ABC’s editing of the Palin interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}