SARAH PALIN ON IRAQ....I thought that maybe if I transcribed this podcast it would make more sense, but no dice. Here is Sarah Palin a couple of weeks ago talking about energy supplies and the war in Iraq:
The GOP agenda to ramp up domestic supplies of energy is the only way that we're going to become energy independent, the only way that we are going to become a more secure nation — and I say this, of course, looking at the situation we are in right now, at war, not knowing what the plan is to ever end the war that we're engaged in, understanding that Americans are seeking solutions, and they are seeking resolution in this war effort, so energy supplies, being able to produce and supply domestically, is going to be a big part of that.
....I have a 19 year old who's getting ready to be deployed to Iraq. His Stryker brigade will leave on September 11th of this year. He's 19, he'll be gone for a year. [And so] kind of on a personal level, when I talk about, umm, the plan for the war, you know, let's make sure we have a plan here, and respecting McCain's position on that.
So it turns out that not only does John McCain's running mate not have even the slightest background in foreign policy, but that she can't even talk about it coherently. McCain's handlers really have their work cut out for them.
And here, Matt Yglesias confirms that McCain had apparently met Palin exactly twice before today: once a few months ago when she came to Washington to talk about oil drilling and once more for five minutes via phone last Sunday. [UPDATE: Nope, three times! He also met with her briefly on Thursday morning before offering her the VP slot at 11 am.]
This is all part of what I was talking about the other day when I noted that McCain is running such a palpably unserious campaign. Steve Schmidt seems solely interested in winning the daily news cycle; his staff spends its time gleefully churning out juvenile attack videos; McCain himself has retreated into robotic incantations of simpleminded talking points; and now he's chosen a manifestly unqualified VP that he knows nothing about. I've honestly never seen anything like it.
But hey — as long as we're on the subject of unseriousness, I have to say that humorists sure do work fast these days. Within a couple of hours of Palin's announcement, we got Palin on the cover of Vogue (the real Vogue pictures are here) and Sarah Palin's blog. For more, ThinkProgress and Andrew Sullivan have both become 24/7 Palin trivia machines.
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