A lengthy profile of Sarah Palin is featured in Vanity Fair’s August edition and it includes some candid thoughts by campaign advisers to Sen. John McCain on the one-time vice presidential nominee.
Notably, the Alaska Governor was apparently so intent on delivering a concession speech that McCain advisers found it already loaded in the TelePrompTer when they went to put in his remarks. When she was later told he could not deliver it, Palin even went directly to McCain and she raised the issue as the two were walking out to the podium that final night in Arizona.
The author, former New York Times correspondent Todd S. Purdum, writes that “a range of people from the McCain-Palin campaign, including members of the high command, agreed to elaborate on how a match they thought so right ended up going so wrong. ”
Some excerpts from the revealing piece:
On the campaign: “… (M)ost made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be.”
On Palin’s CBS interview: “By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the (Katie) Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman.”
On Palin as a candidate: “I saw her as a raw talent (says one key McCain aide). Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better.”
On Palin’s striking good looks: This “reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin’s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.”
On Palin’s future: “(S)he has the good fortune to have traction within a political party that is bereft of strong leadership, and whose rank and file often demands qualities other than knowledge, experience, and an understanding that facts are, as John Adams said, stubborn things.”
10 Comments
“striking good looks”???? She’s ok from a grandmother but she ain’t no Cindy Crawford. Give me a break!
“And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.”
I’m not sure what contest this “beauty queen” could enter never mind win. Puhleeze. She certainly is a vapid like a beauty queen - I’ll give her that.
Why not since we all know who is on the cover
of the August issue none other than Heath Ledger.
The mag will be full of crap like this..More Sarha Palin why not have her daughter talk about
safe sex and not to have children.. What is she
up to now..
The only thing funnier than sarah palin is a sarah palin supporter. Where are they at today?
This woman is not attractive, nor photogenic just plain ugly.
She is a moron….
McCain, being a member of the good ol’ boys club chose Palin as his running mate for one reason and one reason only. Once Hilary Clinton was out of the race he and his party believed pea brained, silly women would throw a vote to a female–no matter what party she was in or what she stood for.
That last paragraph says it all. Very succinct and very accurate.
She not striking nor is she one to be reckoned with. she a country bumpkin with “fashionably ugly” glasses. sarah, you should read up on history & current affairs- pls stay in alaska!
Caribou Barbie can go back to Alaska and never come back.