Bill Kristol is a fiercely partisan conservative commentator with, reputedly, good connections to the McCain campaign. His NYT column yesterday sounds the alarm for McCain's candidacy. Reader CA draws our attention to this passage on Palin:

McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice.

I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They’re supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday...

In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, more important, the case against Obama. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted."

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that Thursday's VP debate is make-or-break for the McCain campaign. Actually, it's not so much a potential Make (he'll get a boost if she does well, but it won't alter the fundamentals) as a potential Break. If she crashes - or 'Courics' - I think it will be a blow McCain won't recover from.

I think, insofar as anything will work with regard to Palin, the approach outlined by Kristol is the right one. Cram her full of new information and ask her to pretend to be something she's not - a world-class foreign affairs expert - and she will drown in her own gibberish. Let her do what she's best at and she may cause an upset.

Palin needs to find a cute way of deflecting questions she's unsure about, make a few jokes, and go straight on to the attack. It will be crude, and Democrats will cry foul, and everyone will say she lost the arguments on substance. But if she can deliver one or two memorable zingers and provoke Biden into a gaffe, Palin might just turn this into a good night for her team.

UPDATE: good WSJ report on McCain camp's new determination to 'let Sarah be Sarah'.

