Paul Mulshine: Palin doesn't pass laugh test

The Star-Ledger's Paul Mulshine penned the following piece BEFORE Sarah Palin's electrifying speech at the GOP Convention, but he still has questions.

Sarah Palin doesn't pass the laugh test

Posted by Paul Mulshine September 04, 2008 2:52AM

H�ow long before John McCain gives the speech where he says he's 1000 percent behind Sarah Palin?

I allude, of course, to George McGovern's famous quote about his first vice presidential choice, Tom Eagleton, back in 1972. That assurance was followed by a decision to dump Eagleton after reports surfaced that he had been treated for depression with electroshock therapy.

This Palin nomination is shaping up to be the worst vice presidential pick since¤'72. I gather that there is still great hope for Palin inside the hall where the convention is being held. But I'm not inside that hall. The modern political convention is a TV show, and it is best watched on TV, which is what I'm doing.

As TV shows go, the first episode of the Sarah Palin series was great. We were introduced to the characters, and we were intrigued. There was mom, the former beauty queen who became a governor. There was the hubby, a commercial fisherman, oil worker and snowmobile racer. There were the kids, all of whom had great TV names like Willow, Piper, Bristol, Track and Trig and all of whom were presumably being raised with the best small-town values.

The second episode was a shocker, though. That's where the baby-daddy was introduced. The term "baby-daddy" has come into the language as a term that describes a father who is not married to a mother. And it turned out that 17-year-old Bristol from the Ozzie-and-Harriet family had been impregnated by a guy straight out of MTV. And as such characters do, 18-year-old Levi Johnston had a MySpace page on which he said all sorts of embarrassing things about himself, including a profanity-laced tirade that ended with the news that he was in a relationship, but "I DON'T WANT KIDS."

Never has a sitcom gone south so fast. Palin had gone from role model to laughingstock in one show. Jay Leno, David Letterman and all the late-night talk-show hosts got into the act.

This is not the sort of thing a candidate recovers from. A candidate can withstand endless attacks from the Washington Post and the New York Times, but you don't go from Letterman's Top Ten List to the top of American politics. Once she's cast as the ditzy ex-beauty queen who failed to notice her daughter was dating a thug, Palin is not going to be able to reinvent herself as the reformer who's ready to take over the presidency.

And the tough tests have yet to begin. As far as anyone can determine, Palin seems to have no discernible views on foreign policy. Back in February, she was quoted as saying of Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning candidate for the GOP nomination, "He's a good guy." But Paul's foreign policy views are the opposite of McCain's. Paul is a non-interventionist. McCain wants to intervene everywhere.

The Paul view is much closer to the traditional Republican view of foreign affairs that George W. Bush appealed to back in 2000. But Bush then did a 180 and committed the federal government to "ending tyranny on Earth." That's a nice thought, but at the time he uttered it, Palin's only political experience was as the mayor of the small Anchorage suburb of Wasilla. That's hardly an apt training ground for sorting out South Ossetia.

The irony here is that Palin is a perfect candidate for running the sort of small-government America that Republicans used to believe in. But she'd have to be the second coming of Joan of Arc to handle the messianic mission McCain seems to envision. She certainly has the skills to handle scripted appearances such as the Friday event and her speech last night (which occurred after this column went to press.) But her handlers must be dreading the prospect of Palin at press conferences. Any gaffe will go straight to the midnight monologues.

Meanwhile, McCain passed over a passel of politicians with extensive experience in that regard. Mitt Romney may be a bit boring, but he was guaranteed not to upstage McCain.

The Palin pick looks like yet another Beltway blunder for McCain. The senator has spent so much of his life in D.C. that he is left flailing about when dealing with the real America. There were reports that his first choice for the veep spot was Joe Lieberman, perhaps the sole candidate who would have been worse than Palin.

I could be wrong, though. Perhaps Palin will turn out to be absolutely brilliant once she gets out there and campaigns. Perhaps this series will have a happy ending.

But if I were McCain, I'd pick up the remote and change the channel.

UPDATE: I wrote this column before the speech because of an early deadline. The speech itself went pretty well, as I noted in my prior blog post, so perhaps I was a bit pessimistic about her prospects. Of course, we've still got the baby daddy in the headlines and lots of other laugh lines out there, so that will keep us amused.

Also, there's the prospect of how well Palin will do when she's out there fielding questions. There's about three newspapers in Alaska, so she'll have to get up to speed pretty quick to handle the media mess that she will be entering.

One thing I really liked from both her speech and the other presentations last night was the emphasis on the "explore-all-options" approach to energy. They could really kill the Democrats on this, since the Democrats oppose not only drilling but also the vast expansion of nuclear we need.

But again Palin is opposed here to her own presidential candidate, McCain. He opposes drilling in the Arctic National Widlife Refuge, a nutty stand that he will have th change.

This analysis piece by Adam Nagourney gives a good synopsis of what the future will look like for her.

Read the original article HERE.