Palin Takes On A New Foe: Her Image
By Tom Shales
Washington Post
Friday, October 3, 2008
Sarah Palin looked as though she had prepared for her appearance at the vice presidential debate last night by studying Tina Fey's impressions of her on "Saturday Night Live." She twinkled and winked and piled on the perkiness, a "darn right" here and an "I'll betcha" there.
The challenge to Fey, who is scheduled to play the Alaska governor and Republican candidate again on the next "SNL" broadcast, will be to out-Palin Palin, to make the parody more outrageous than the original.
At the same time, Palin seemed determined to banish thoughts of her as airheaded and inexperienced; she was really debating her own public image rather than Sen. Joe Biden. She subverted the whole purpose of the exercise by merely repeating the key points of her running mate, Sen. John McCain, and ignoring questions that called for more specific answers.
People who came to the debate loving Sarah Palin probably went away from it loving her as much as ever. People who came to the debate hoping to see a fiasco, to see Palin make colossal gaffes, had to have been disappointed. She may have swayed a few "undecideds" her way with her mom-next-door demeanor and seemingly indomitable smile. There were mistakes here and there, but they were mostly minor -- but then, Palin's answers in the debate were more about herself than about the policies of McCain or George W. Bush or even the country's current economic crisis.
Palin scolded the Democrat from Delaware if he dared to mention the name of Bush, the similarities between Bush and McCain -- in terms of philosophy, voting record and approach to foreign policy -- or even to acknowledge the existence of the past eight years of Republican rule. "There you go again, pointing backward again," she said to Biden, imitating Ronald Reagan's famous "there you go again" rejoinder to Jimmy Carter in a 1980 presidential debate. She continued her smiling reprimand by using the phrase "now, doggone it," another of the folksy colloquialisms with which she (carefully?) seasons her speech.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
Friday, October 3, 2008
Sarah Palin looked as though she had prepared for her appearance at the vice presidential debate last night by studying Tina Fey's impressions of her on "Saturday Night Live." She twinkled and winked and piled on the perkiness, a "darn right" here and an "I'll betcha" there.
The challenge to Fey, who is scheduled to play the Alaska governor and Republican candidate again on the next "SNL" broadcast, will be to out-Palin Palin, to make the parody more outrageous than the original.
At the same time, Palin seemed determined to banish thoughts of her as airheaded and inexperienced; she was really debating her own public image rather than Sen. Joe Biden. She subverted the whole purpose of the exercise by merely repeating the key points of her running mate, Sen. John McCain, and ignoring questions that called for more specific answers.
People who came to the debate loving Sarah Palin probably went away from it loving her as much as ever. People who came to the debate hoping to see a fiasco, to see Palin make colossal gaffes, had to have been disappointed. She may have swayed a few "undecideds" her way with her mom-next-door demeanor and seemingly indomitable smile. There were mistakes here and there, but they were mostly minor -- but then, Palin's answers in the debate were more about herself than about the policies of McCain or George W. Bush or even the country's current economic crisis.
Palin scolded the Democrat from Delaware if he dared to mention the name of Bush, the similarities between Bush and McCain -- in terms of philosophy, voting record and approach to foreign policy -- or even to acknowledge the existence of the past eight years of Republican rule. "There you go again, pointing backward again," she said to Biden, imitating Ronald Reagan's famous "there you go again" rejoinder to Jimmy Carter in a 1980 presidential debate. She continued her smiling reprimand by using the phrase "now, doggone it," another of the folksy colloquialisms with which she (carefully?) seasons her speech.
(Continued here.)
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