Whatever happened to Sarah’s great political instincts, cont.; and how conservatives should deal with the press

Katie Couric asked her why she had never traveled to Europe, and here was her answer:

“I’m not one of those who maybe come from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduated college and their parents get them a passport and a backpack and say, ‘Go off and travel the world.’ Noooo. I worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life, until I had kids. … I was not part of, I guess, that culture.”

Paul Mulshine comments:

Palin could have simply answered that Alaska is a long way from any foreign country and overseas travel is not convenient or affordable for most Alaskans. Instead she chose to appeal to class warfare.

Mary writes:

I’m two years younger than Mrs. Palin. When I graduated from college in the mid 80’s I took advantage of the strong dollar and applied for my own passport and bought my own backpack and ticket to Europe and hitchhiked and “hosteled” throughout Europe and the UK. I could only afford to travel rough. I worked only one job in college and paid my own way (and got into a little bit of debt too). If there’s a will, there’s a way.

Randy writes:

I believe that Palin suffers from two huge handicaps. First, she is inexperienced—with the demonic national press. We all know the purpose of interviews from the liberal press has only one purpose and that is to destroy the candidates they don’t support and build up the candidates they approve. Palin has limited experience at the level of the national press.

Second, she is hamstrung by McCain’s contempt for true conservatism. If her instinct is truly conservative (ie grounded in traditionalist reality), it is easy to see how easily she can be manipulated and confused while trying reconcile what she knows is right and what the McCain staff is “advising” her to do. [LA replies: interesting theory.]

As a traditionalist who has benefited from the wisdom of VFR, if I were a candidate I would simply refuse to answer most of the questions, based on my understanding of what the media is about. But how many Republican politicians would do that? Even Tancredo was “used” by the press. Remember those ridiculous primary debates with Chris Matthews as the “moderator”? I ask, why should members of the press be participating in the debates by being the moderators who decide what questions should be asked? They should be covering the debates, not being part of them. [Intriguing idea. Who then should be asking the questions, if not the press?]

In the end, the so called conservative political class has lost its ability to oppose liberalism, since they are, as you say, right-liberals themselves. Republicans refuse to focus on the issues (as opponents of leftist ideology) and run these idiotic, vanilla campaigns with generic slogans and like “I am for change,” “I will be bipartisan,” or “I will eliminate Washington corruption.”

LA replies:

As I remember, Couric did not ask unfair or “gotcha” questions, as was done by Charles Gibson (who in my opinion really tainted himself with his superior, contemptuous manner). It wasn’t Couric’s fault that Palin made a fool of herself by insisting that being Alaska governor involves significant foreign policy experience.

But your larger concern is valid. Any serious conservative will be aware that the press is his enemy, and that he must be cautious about what types of interview situations he gets into, and, if he has the power, set guidelines.

It depends on what kind of conservative one is. If you’re a person talking about a subject that makes you a total villain, race differences, for example, you probably should not give a non-live interview to any TV news station, because they will kill you with the editing. I remember how ABC interviewed Michael Levin in his apartment for a couple of hours, and then showed a few seconds of him juxtaposed with people standing behind a fence in a concentration camp.

If you’re a less un-PC but still hated conservative and feel that it’s ok to give a taped interview, you must be aware of the tricks the media play. For example, you must set the condition that they will not show you in super closeups making you look guilty and sinister while the reporter is shown in a medium shot looking suave and in control; you must insist that you be shown in a medium shot. And if they’re not willing to do that, refuse the interview. I remember how Mike Wallace on Sixty Minutes did that to Christopher Ruddy around 1997 when “interviewing” him on his book on the death of Vincent Foster. This was not an interview; it was demonization. I was so sickened by their biased treatment of Ruddy that I have literally never watched Sixty Minutes again.

As for Palin, if I had been on the McCain campaign, I would have set a condition that the interview with Palin must be shown at one time, not broken up into tiny segments spread over several days.

However, if Palin is simply not able to come across well in an interview, even with fair questions such as came from Couric , then she shouldn’t give interviews. After all, Hillary Clinton closed herself off completely from press questions when she ran for U.S. Senator from New York in 2000. It was outrageous, I never saw anything like it. But she got away with it.

Another thing conservatives must remember is not to play the game by the media’s rules, but to challenge the premises in their questions, the way Alan Keyes did in 2000. But to do that you must have an intellectual frame of reference outside of liberalism, you must be willing to confront liberal assumptions, and must be pretty intelligent, so this is not something that most conservative politicians would be able or willing to do.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 27, 2008 11:11 AM | Send