Re: “George; you muse …”

Yes. Why is it that a conservative candidate has to have substance, but a liberal one has to have only “good intentions”?

George; you muse; “I wrote some time ago before the 2008 election that Palin needed to deepen her reach as a thinker, analyst and communicator.”

You then continue; “There is a tinny tone to her discourse that suggests a shallow grasp of some of the critical forces that shape the world in which we live and she might seek to govern.”

After watching the current Commander-in-Chief in action for the last year, I submit she could not possibly do worse. Obama’s soaring rhetoric and lofty campaign promises have gotten us nowhere. He’s ‘doubled-down’ on the supposed horrid deficits of the Bush era, has retreated on missile defense, thrown Israel under the bus, is on the cusp of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan, and is conducting almost all aspects of domestic policy with a Chicago politician’s ‘take-no-prisoners’ attitude.

Her largest weakness, as I see it, will indeed be the detractors in the media that will continue to go after her as lacking in gravitas. That being said, astute handlers can get her over those bumps. Plus she has a media friend. She did well in her latest interview with Bill O’Rielly, and would get much farther reach with Fox News than she ever would with CNN or MSNBC.

I believe that a pro-life, evangelical, strong willed female is exactly what liberals fear. The one thing she has to be careful of is ‘shooting from the hip’. What I think her other races didn’t really prepare her for was how to ‘stay on message’. Other politicians routinely have a ‘standard answer’ they fall back on whenever an interviewer asks an out-of-bounds question or a question that has no pre-prepared answer. They may get accused of ducking the question, but what politician doesn’t? Once she learns that skill, she’s the death knell of the liberal presidential candidate.