Lipstick and ABC interview
Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, John McCain and dirty politics
Tiny clips and three excerpts of Palin's ABC interview available
Article added on September 12, 2008 at 13:47 Riga time
  
Obama's lipstick remark was probably innocent. Let's give Barack the benefit of the doubt. He has used the expression more than once before. Still, he should have been aware that after Sarah Palin's hockey mom, pit bull and lipstick remark, the situation had changed and that this standard expression could be interpreted as an attack on Palin. In fact, many in Obama's audience thought it to be a reference to Palin. The McCain campaign was quick to react and exploit the situation with an ad claiming that Obama had compared Palin to a big. All in all, this is a tempest in a teapot.

More serious and clearly below the belt was the McCain ad claiming that Obama wanted comprehensive sex education in kindergarten,  “Learning about sex before learning to read?”, as they put it in the ad. A look at the relevant page of the Illinois legislature shows that the claim is baseless. Incidentally, this was a 2003 bill - not co-sponsored by Obama - to modify the teaching of sex education in Illinois. Obama voted for it but it never became law. More importantly, it requested: “course material and instruction shall be age and developmentally appropriate”. No use of condoms or information about HIV for kindergarteners. In the 2004 Senate race, Alan Keyes used this proposed piece of legislation - without success - to discredit Obama. McCain's sex education ad is indeed a Karl Rove style dirty politics attack. If John McCain wants to keep his reputation as a serious politician, he should stop this kind of ad immediately.

On the other hand, the Obama camp claims that McCain would just serve another Bush term and that being rich meant for McCain being above the $5 million mark. McCain had said it jokingly and even foreseen that, one day, it would be used against him: “sure that comment will be distorted”. It may not be as dirty as the kindergarten ad, but it is wrong too. [added on September 12, 2008 at 17:04 Riga time: among other Obama lies, barely-true and half-true statements, I forgot to add the 100-year war claim, which Obama has repeated many times, e.g. in the Democratic debate of February 26, 2008: “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years”. What McCain said was not that he was ready to go to war for another one-hundred years, but: “We've been in South Korea.... in Japan for 60 years... As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that's fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training and recruiting and motivating people every single day.”].



As for Alaska's bridge-to-nowhere, in fact to an island with an airport, Sarah Palin supported it before she turned against it. Running for governor, she was in favor of the bridge, once elected governor, she stopped the project. In September 2007, the Gravina bridge project was dead anyway. A lot of the money had already been used for other  transportation project. Palin concluded that the bridge-to-nowhere undermined Alaska's reputation and that  “the $398-million bridge is not the answer” to Ketchikan's desire to get a better way to reach the airport.  “... Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island”. Although she killed the project in the end, this was not a bold move by Palin.

Other Palin-McCain claims are true. For instance that she put the jet on eBay. It did not sell for the asking price of $2.5 million, but it was later bought by a businessman for $2.1 million.

Palin's ABC interview

So far, three excerpts from an ABC News exclusive interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, conducted by Charlie Gibson in Alaska on September 11, 2008 are available. Palin said that yes, she was experienced enough to be vice president and that she told McCain so: “I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink. So I didn't blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”



Regarding Gibson's question whether she thought that the United States are fighting a holy war, Palin answered: “... the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said - first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side. That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.”

Charlie Gibson did not give her a free ride, but she defended herself well. Gibson continued: “I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."” Palin answered: “I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, in my world view, is a grand - The grand plan.”

In a segment about Russia, Sarah Palin said that the Cold War was over and that she was in favor of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO. When Gibson asked about a possible war if Russia went into Georgia, Palin answered: “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help. But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and ... we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members..”

When Gibson asked whether Georgia was worth a war, Palin said: “What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. ...  It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries. His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.”

Kaylene Johnson: Sarah: How a Small Town Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear.  Epicenter Press, April 2008, 159 pages. Order the book from Amazon.com. More of an introduction than a profound book, but that's all that is available about Sarah Palin right now.