What were we to expect when we were told Gwen Ifill of PBS would “moderate” the vice presidential debate? That the debate would be skewed to the left, favoring Joe Biden, obviously. Now we find that she has written a book extolling the rising of a new black political class that is indebted to Barack Obama’s meteoric ascension. And it is to be released to the bookstores on Jan. 20, 2009, the presidential inauguration day. Now here are the counts against Ifill doing a fair job in running the debate.

(1) She’s a “mainstream journalist” which means, according to the odds, it’s 87% she’s for Obama.

(2) She’s black which means it’s 97% sure she’s for Obama.

(3). She has a heavy financial interest in the election outcome with her book: you guess the odds.

(4) She somehow neglected to inform the Presidential Debate Commission she had the book-now you guess the odds.

**
Free Sarah Palin




Now that Ronald Reagan has been installed as a conservative deity and immune from all criticism, few remember his disastrous first debate in 1984 with former vice president Walter F. Mondale. Reagan was 73…one year older than John McCain is now…and rumors dogged him that he was losing it because of advancing age. He validated some of those rumors by putting on the worst debacle of his acting-political career…veering away with controversy…even saying at one point (responding to a bland journalistic question why he didn’t go to church regularly) that the reason was he didn’t want to interrupt church services for everyone else by having the Secret Service tag along. The line was so absurd that it quickly became a staple on late-night monologues.

Years later both Mike Deaver and Ed Meese who were my guests when I taught political science at DePaul gave the identical answers as to the reason. A hugely protective White House staff of handlers had surrounded Reagan…and so worried were they that the Old Actor would make a mistake…they thoroughly drowned him not just with statistics but with admonitions on what not to say. For the next debate with Mondale, it was Nancy Reagan, Deaver said, who finally took matters in hand, had the handlers dismissed and instead mandated that Reagan make a list of a few central points he wanted…starting with the joke that won the day-that he would not make an issue of his opponent’s age (Mondale was 56)!

There is no doubt that a few days after her nomination, Sarah Palen was surrounded by well-meaning but entirely prissy and over-cautious former aides of George W. Bush who cautioned her….cautioned her…gave her verbal lists of what not to say…which thoroughly watered down her refreshing spontaneity. For example, they set as a goal not going to conservative talk radio and Fox television news but to do well on…of all vehicles…Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News! Katie Couric is an articulate instrument of the liberal cause in the media. Palen should not have gotten near Couric until well in the lineup…long after she had got her feet wet on the more acceptable vehicles of the media.

It is obvious Palen behaved like a performer on a high-wire with Couric, refusing even to enumerate the newspapers she reads or doesn’t read. Couric is the national version…although far better skilled in politics…than our local liberal dilettante in politics, Carol Marin who is so cross-eyedly lefty (her idol is Studs Terkel the ancient wealthy lakefront socialist) she cannot judge up from down.

I predicted here after the nomination of Palen which I enthusiastically endorsed the campaign by the Democrats and the allied mainstream media to make her appear dumb…the same people who believe all Republican conservatives are dumb-Eisenhower was over the hill and senile when he was president…Goldwater was dumb (until in his dotage he renounced social conservatism and then he was courageous)…Ford was dumb…Reagan was ultra-dumb…G. H. W. Bush was a closeted elitist and hence dumbly isolated from the average guy…his son with a master’s in business administration from Harvard is ultra-dumb…on and on.

So on the eve of the Palen debate, I say Free Sarah Palin. Kick the “moderate” handlers out and let her consult with some people from Alaska who helped her in the first place. Have her go to the debate determined to put Barack Obama…not necessarily Joe Biden…on the defensive. Her reward for winning the debate will be heightened media animosity-but so what? She is probably the only one who can save the election right now for McCain. She and the emergence of Events My Dear Boy serve as the only bastion against defeat which is endemic because of the unpopularity of this president and the economic meltdown.