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At the post, "Sarah is the Fresh Air," on Blogher, I found this comment today:
When can she be interviewed by reporters - I find it disturbing that the McCain campaign isn't allowing Ms. Palin to be interviewed by reporters. What are they hiding?
According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, possibly never:
Oh, well, wait - maybe in two weeks, said Todd Harris yesterday, a Republican strategist who was John McCain's communications manager. Why not for at least two weeks? Listen:
And in fact, did anyone see Sarah Palin on the Sunday shows this morning? Nope. Just the boys. Governor Sarah Palin, the candidate about whom we know the least, remains the person we're seeing the least often and hearing from the most infrequently.
But is this scarcity of Sarah due to sexism?
The McCain campaign is so afraid that she might make a mistake that they'll keep her out of the voters' view for at least fourteen days - when there's only 60 days left for voters to choose. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic calls this move sexist:
The sexism that implies that someone cannot stand up to reporters because she is a woman is appalling. This entire pick, of course, is incredibly sexist, and the handling of her in the last week the most sexist double standard I have ever seen in American politics. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton saying she wasn't going to answer questions for two weeks? Or Margaret Thatcher? Or Kay Bailey Hutchison? Or Elizabeth Dole? And none of these women were ever as close to global power as Sarah Palin now is. This is getting to Manchurian Candidate levels of creepiness. It's deeply sinister and slightly terrifying.
And, Jay Carney wrote the following in regard to Nicole Wallace's shrug off, in TIME's blog, The Swampland:
...in [Nicole Wallace's] smug dismissal of the media's role in asking questions of the candidates, Wallace was really showing contempt not for reporters, but for voters. I bet there are a lot of undecided voters out there who were intrigued by Sarah Palin last night, but who don't yet know enough about her -- what she believes, what she knows -- to be comfortable with the idea of her as vice president of the United States. It's important to them to know if Palin can handle herself in an environment that isn't controlled and sanitized by campaign image makers and message mavens. Maybe she can, maybe she can't. As far as Wallace is concerned, it's none of their -- or your -- business.
David Frum, of The National Review, wants the McCain ticket to win and wants to see more of Palin. In his post, "Why Bother?," he answers Wallace's laugh-filled opinion that no one cares if Palin ever meets with the press by saying that he cares, because in order to win, McCain needs to go beyond the non-Elitist vote that the controlled messages hit:
If you want to win a debate, you have to come prepared to debate for every audience at every level. We can all understand that it is unwise to refuse Oprah. But it is equally unwise to do only Oprah. It's not just Jay Carney who wants more. As President Bush's current numbers suggest, so does Oprah's audience.
What other evidence have we seen that the McCain handlers might be sexist?
In this August 30 New York Times article, McCain advisor Charlie Black, when asked about Palin's ability to handle matters of foreign policy, says:
...that [John McCain] viewed her as exceptionally talented and intelligent and that he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.
“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.
And then, in regard to the same question, but this time posed by Campbell Brown, McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds paints a similar image of a maiden at the feet of the experienced master:
Bounds: Governor Palin has the good fortune of being on the same ticket
