The emerging consensus among right-wing commentators is that John McCain has made a terrible mistake in connection with Sarah Palin. No, not that terrible mistake! The terrible mistake in question is the campaign's decision to limit her exposure to a handful of interviews with mainstream outlets, where biased liberal journalists ask her 'gotcha' questions and then the rest of the media pick forensically over her responses. The solution: free Sarah Palin to be herself, to speak to conservative talk-radio outlets, and not to worry about tricky "facts" and suchlike. Here's Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review:
"My guess — based on nothing but hope for a change — is that Sarah Palin just needs some freedom. I don't know who is holding her back but if John McCain wants to win this thing it had better not be him and his staff. When I watch these interviews, I see a woman who looks like she's stayed up all night studying and is trying to remember the jurisprudential chronology of privacy vis-a-vis reproduction, the war on terror, and public figures (add 12 more things, described in the most complicated way possible, to the list to be more accurate)."
Similar views are expressed by the reliably insane Mark Steyn, and also Byron York. And now here's the influential conservative New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, this morning:
"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."
Now, as Hit and Run notes, Palin's past debating performances in Alaska don't really suggest that she is a combative conservative at all: "She's an affable, aw-shucks conservative." But not to worry! Several sources are reporting that CBS has more embarrassing interview responses by Palin which it plans to air in the run-up to Thursday's debate, thereby lowering expectations so far that her victory is surely inevitable, no matter how much fancy book-learnin' Joe Biden exhibits.
