Madeline,
From Palin's record in Alaska, it seems clear that she is brilliant in dealing with the details of these huge complicated projects (oil companies, gas pipeline), and in negotiating agreement among mega-parties. To go from the PTA to defeating her own party incumbents and governing with a high approval rating argues some sort of unusual abilitiy.
I don’t think we can just average this evidence together with the bad performances in the interviews and come out with a verdict of ‘mediocre intelligence.’ For a very capable person to occasionally make a bad performance (especially in an area marginal to their expertise) is a common occurence. For an idiot to manage the accomplishments she has in Alaska, is not even possible.
As to just how much of the interview problem was hers and how much was hostile interviewers, see a Mark Levin page with a less edited transcript of the Gibson interview. I could also find cites showing hostile maneuvers by Couric (newsbusters or media matters or some such site, plus some of it was visible to the naked viewer). Even in those, we are still getting transcripts that came through the Gibson and Couric agencies; we don’t have the full raw data. (Greta at Fox may have published raw data from her interviews after the Nov election; certainly it is very different.)
As to ‘non-intellectual’ — how would you rate Hillary on that? Hillary’s brilliance also seems practical, how to rather than why to.
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Madeline,
Rather than Liberal/Conservative policies, I’m interested in the issue of Palin’s intelligence, the media treatment, etc — and people judging Palin’s intelligence by factors like her speech patterns, hairstyle, and mannerisms (I had such negative reactions myself and am re-examining my own prejudices).
As for the Gibson intervinew, it was not his glowering but the extreme editing of content. Have you seen the fuller transcript at Mark Levin? It’s too long to copy here, but I can find links for you. Whole chunks were dropped out, her answer to one question was presented as though it were the answer to a previous question.
In the Couric interview, the minor editing given to most interview subjects, cleaning up their grammar, etc, was not done; her words were spelled phonetically to make her sound uneducated: “get back to ya.” Couric went after questions about McCain that had nothing to do with Palin’s own experience or expertise. She put words in Palin’s mouth and then asked McCain to comment on them, as though Palin had initiated those words (”depression”). Palin said later that she had told McCain’s staff that the Couric interview (spanning several days) was not going well and she wanted to end it, but the staff insisted she go on. (Maybe I should start a blog “Puma for Palin” to put all this material in one place. :-), if that hasn’t been done already.)
In the debate and elsewhere Palin was speaking for McCain as instructed by his staff.
In a national campaign she was out of her element, performing on short notice, and following orders from the McCain staff. Her poor appearance there is not a reflection on her intelligence in general, or on her fitness for the Presidency in future.
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Flora (fsteele) on March 8th, 2009 3:06 pm
Madeline,
I’d like to pursue the issue of a possible difference in kind of intelligence between Hillary and Palin. I haven’t seen either of them discussing “complex and esoteric subjects” in a complex way. Can you give some examples?