The Note: Palin Significance

The Note: Race lands on Sarah's shoulders, as McCain seeks new turn -- again.

ByABC News
September 9, 2008, 8:20 AM

Sept. 29, 2008— -- Now that (we presume) the economy will be saved and the republic will endure and our money is as safe as the politicians who crafted this bailout package (read: not very), a few questions to take us into a week that will surely be more predictable than the last one:

How many presidents do you need to save a bailout bill?

How many winners were there in Friday's debate?

How many more ready-made opportunities do the candidates have to shift the terms of the race? (How many times has the Obama campaign done anything as bold as the McCain campaign does about every other week?)

How much impact will "Saturday Night Live" have if politics subsumes the jokes?

How many times will Bill Clinton say, "Barack Obama is the best man for the job"?

How many more times can Gov. Sarah Palin unleash words instead of answers without seeing her image cemented by the national media? (How much does Steve Schmidt care about that question?)

(Is the answer to all the above questions, "zero"?)

This is why you pick a vice president (plus the Tina Fey impersonations, we suppose). Palin will be critical to Sen. John McCain's success this week -- the flubs and fumbles under close scrutiny, the episodes where she seems to contradict McCain while talking circles around herself under an unforgiving glare.

The pressure would rest on the McCain ticket's shoulders anyway, given the shuttle (and shifting) diplomacy of last week that didn't quite work out. Add to that a first debate that cements the status quo, a running mate who seems to be getting worse the more (still limited) time she's out there, and a very big week gets bigger for Sarah Palin.

Think Team McCain is worried about Thursday's debate? After a joint McCain-Palin interview with Katie Couric, there's one final joint event in Ohio, and then the GOP vice-presidential nominee heads to Sedona, Ariz., for debate prep -- and stays until debate time.

"The McCain campaign moved its top officials inside Gov. Sarah Palin's operation Sunday to prepare for what is certain to be the most important event of her vice-presidential campaign: her debate on Thursday with Democrat Joe Biden," Monica Langley writes in The Wall Street Journal.

"More broadly, the McCain campaign aims to halt what it sees as a perceived decline in the crispness and precision of Gov. Palin's latest remarks as well as a fall in recent polls, according to several advisers and party officials," Langley writes. "In recent days, Gov. Palin flubbed quasi-mock debates in New York City and Philadelphia, some operatives said. Finger-pointing began, and then intensified after her faltering interview with CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric." l

Palin may already be past the tipping point with political insiders -- though she still has chances with the public.

"Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can," Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria writes. "But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish. . . . The more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb. Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president."

A bold campaign is the only kind that can work for McCain, Bill Kristol writes in his New York Times column. "McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her -- aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House," Kristol writes. "I'm told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff's handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They're supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday."

Why the Couric interview probably only made things worse: "The interview is drawing extraordinary attention because of the McCain campaign's calculated decision to shield Palin from reporters. No vice-presidential nominee in modern history has been this inaccessible to the media, reinforcing the perception that she can't hit major-league pitching," The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes.

One big reason Thursday matters: "So now all those who didn't see the Couric interview will be able to decide if the selection of Palin was 'genius,' as some called it at the time, or the action of a man who will clearly do or say anything now to save his last chance at the presidency," Mike Lupica writes in the New York Daily News.

"The buzz on Sarah Palin has gone all bad," ABC's George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" Monday. "When you become a punch line in politics, it is one of the worst things that can happen, and that is what is happening to Sarah Palin now."

"It's going to be very, very hard to erase the impression that she's given in her network TV interviews -- that she is in way, way over her head and she is not ready for prime time," Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News told ABC's David Wright on "GMA."

"Sarah Palin: Growing target," Mark Silva writes for the Chicago Tribune. "In the few weeks since Republicans nominated the first-term governor of Alaska and ex-mayor of tiny Wasilla for vice president, Palin has provided growing fodder for late-night comics and even serious conservative commentators, one calling for her withdrawal."

More for the Palin files: "Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual," per the AP's Brett J. Blackledge. "When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception -- and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard. She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free 'awesome facial' she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The 'absolutely gorgeous flowers' she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home."

Editorial in the Anchorage Daily News: "BOTTOM LINE: Palin's record as a chief executive ranges from smart and effective to embarrassingly flawed."

New flub? Asked by a voter in Philadelphia Saturday if she'd send US troops into Pakistan to take out terrorists, Palin sounded positively Obama-like: "If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," she said, per ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala.

Responds McCain: "I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitive policy statement made by Governor Palin. And I would hope you wouldn't, either," he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, on Sunday's "This Week."