Palin: Statements on war should disqualify Obama as commander-in-chief David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Friday October 3, 2008





Print This Email This Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin suggested to Fox News's Carl Cameron in her first post-debate interview on Friday morning that she thought she had done pretty well in the debate.



In a remark that is sure to be controversial, Palin also told Cameron that Barack Obama's statements "about the war" should "disqualify someone from consideration as the next commander in chief," because "some of his comments about Afghanistan and what we're doing there -- supposedly just air-raiding villages and killing civilians -- that's reckless."



Time Magazine's Mark Halperin found Palin's implication that Obama ought to be "disqualified" as a candidate for his criticism of Bush administration policy unusual enough to be worth quoting at "The Page," though he did so without comment.



Palin's statement about Obama came in the course of some negative remarks about her earlier interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. She confessed to Cameron that "the Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed," because the "media elite" expected her to answer the questions they asked instead of saying what she thought "Americans want to hear."



"It's like 'Man, no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered,'" Palin complained. "You choose to answer a question, you're going to get clobbered on the answer. You choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too. ... In the Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing."



Palin's tendency to avoid answering questions has started to attract unfavorable attention. CBS's Bob Schieffer suggested in post-debate commentary, "I must say that I found it a little disconcerting, time and again, Sarah Palin would choose not to answer the question and launch into some dissertation -- sometimes talking points -- and not really address what Ifill had asked her."



There is even a satirical "Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart" already online that includes such directions as "Do you have a card that is vaguely related" and "Give your canned response, even if it ignores the question."



Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake was particularly struck by Palin's failure to respond to a question directed to both candidates about their Achilles heels, writing that "her complete inability to do anything other than insert prepared speeches into more or less appropriate places became clear when Gwen Ifill asked the candidates about their personal limitations."



"She does not know what 'achilles heel' means," Hamsher continues. "Watch it. She Does. Not. Know. What. It.Means. Forget the tight stripper skirt, forget the metallic eyeshadow inappropriate for anyone over the age of 40, forget the cloying sitcom delivery, the lies, the cruel and calculated needling of Biden by calling his college professor wife a "school teacher" and saying "she'll get her reward in Heaven" (to a man whose first wife died in a car accident) -- she's an idiot."



This video is from Fox's Happening Now, broadcast October 3, 2008.









Download video via RawReplay.com







