This week, I think he may be right. I looks like her moment in the sun is over - at least for this election.
She'll still be loved by the base etc. But the media narrative has rather abruptly shifted from one of "Fresh Energy" to "Fresh but really really really not ready for Prime Time".
Sometimes the shift moves from 'Really Not Ready' to "What Kind Of Moron Picks Someone Like this?" Andrew, Mike Murphy and even Peggy Noonan were on this bus two weeks ago.
This week that bus got fuller
David Frum
Those who wish to believe in her will continue to believe in her. As for the rest - well it's a 6 in 7 chance that McCain makes it to the end of his first term. That's pretty good!
[and later]
I have been disturbed about the choice from the start, as you know. And I have not seen any reason to feel less disturbed ... She really could be president! And here's where my fellow conservatives really worry me. They are so attracted by the symbolism of the selection that they show no concern — never mind for her executive competence — even for her views.
David Brooks (Today)
In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.
I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.
And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
...Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.
... The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.
Ross Douthat
Sarah The Unready
There's no way to look at her performance [with Charlie Gibson] as anything save supporting evidence for the non-hysterical critique of her candidacy - that it's just too much, too soon - and a splash of cold water for those of us with high hopes for her future on the national stage.
Rod Dreher
There's no way to look at her performance as anything save supporting evidence for the non-hysterical critique of her candidacy - that it's just too much, too soon - and a splash of cold water for those of us with high hopes for her future on the national stage.
And, now, the BIG BREAKUP OF THE DAY:
Richard Cohen
I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty.
The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View,"
Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running.
"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."
Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.
"Actually, they are not lies," he said.
Actually, they are.
McCain ... was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.
But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work.
Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.
On To The Economy, Sarah (and the choice of her) has lost her kick.
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