The Economist on the Palin-Couric Interview

The Economist on The Palin interview with Katie Couric.

"It's too ghastly to laugh at: you almost (not quite, but almost) feel some pity for her. A drama-critic friend of mine made a good point: I think what we're seeing is someone who thought she knew everything discover how little she actually knows, and it terrifies her. Compare her demeanor in the Gibson interview to this one. In the first, she was poised and confident. Sure, she spat out talking points and opaque answers, but she stuck to her script, until Mr Gibson rattled her with the Bush doctrine question. With Ms Couric, conversely, she rambled, she edited her own sentences recursively, she looked away from time to time, and her answers did not make sense—and I don't mean political sense; I mean they made no grammatical or logical sense. Vladimir Putin rearing his head and floating into American air space, tax relief needing to accompany tax reductions, one in five jobs coming in 'the trade sector': these are the words of someone who's rattled. She's politically savvy, so she has a modicum of self-awareness and, as she's said before, she knows she can't blink; she knows she has to seem confident in what she's saying. But I'm also willing to bet she's just smart enough to know how truly out of her depth she is."