Some unsolicited advice to Palin's PR people

I'm not in the habit of giving Republican operatives advice, but after watching Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric I just have to say:

STOP LETTING HER DO NATIONAL INTERVIEWS. STOP IT!!!

I know you needed to get her out there eventually. It was getting to be embarrassing the way you were shielding her. You introduced her as someone who was ready to be president but not do interviews. The embarrassment was not that she couldn't do interveiws, it was that YOU didn't think she could do interviews. If you don't have confidence in her, why should we?

After watching the debacles with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, it seems your lack of confidence was well founded. After four weeks of being sequestered for cram sessions, she still doesn't have a coherent answer to ANY question. I can't think of a single answer that inspired my confidence.

Now...it's not that Palin's people have asked for my advice nor would they, but here it is...

Let Sarah Palin only do local interviews with small time news outlets. Let her do one in every small town you visit. You gain three things:

1) You have the illusion that she is out there talking to the press. Then you can make a legitimate claim that she is doing interviews with the real people...the people who matter. You do a couple of these local interviews each week, and the national outlets will carry them. They will mutter with jealousy, but they'll carry them. You don't have to talk to Wolf to get on CNN.

2) You are bound to get better treatment. The reporters in Po Dunk, Idaho, aren't going to ask you about the Bush Doctrine. They want to know how you will help Potato farmers. It's far easier to bridge to your Alaska story and connect as one of them.

Even better, most local reporters would be thrilled at the chance to interview a VP candidate. They will be so hungry to have a VP candidate you'd be able to demand more concessions.

Palin hack: We want the pimply face intern to do the interview, and he will use the governor's questions.

Pimply faced intern: Yaay!

3) You get practice, so you are ready for the big guns. You don't do your first big interviews with the top anchors of the big three networks, silly. Do I really need to tell you that? You can't learn on that scale. You haven't had an opportunity to feel your way around, learn your style. Worse yet, EVERY BODY is watching. Fifteen to twenty interviews under your belt (that are picked up nationally), you might have the confidence you need to stare down Katie with bubbly defiance. As an added bonus, nobody would care. Nobody is Tivoing, rushing home to see you or YouTubing your 20th interview. By the time Charlie peers over his spectacles, it would be part of the noise.

Of course, I'm sure they won't listen. They will lock her in her cage until it's time to parade her in front of the next conservative crowd....while the wolves and the spotlight wait. Just my $.02

Stumped the candidate

We all knew it, but finally a Republican said it. Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel is questioning whether Palin has enough foreign-policy experience to serve as the country’s second-in-command.

“She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials,” Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald. “You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.

“I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, ‘I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,” he added. “That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.”

Of course, her followers will argue that comments like that are unfair to Palin by being so critical. That's what one supporter at a town hall meeting thought when she lobbed this softball to Palin.

"Please respond to that criticism and give us specific skills that you think you have, to bring to the White House, to rebut that or mitigate that concern," asked the sympathetic questioner.

But Palin did not list specific skills, instead she gave a broad, incomprehensible response:

"I think, because I am a Washington outsider, that opponents are going to be looking for a whole lot of things that they can criticize, and they can kind of beat the candidate here who chose me as his partner to kinda tear down the ticket," Palin responded. "But as for foreign policy, you know, I think I am prepared and I know that on Jan. 20, if we are so blessed as to be sworn into office as your president and vice president, certainly we'll be ready. I'll be ready. I have that confidence. I have that readiness, and if you want specifics with specific policy or countries, go ahead. You can ask, you can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to. But we are ready to serve."

Play stump the candidate? We don't need to play that game. She's already stumped.

She who knows not and knows not that she knows not is a fool. Shun her. - Unknown.