Today's Politico.com details a "run in" that Sarah Palin had with the press in Iowa yesterday. As a preface, Palin is obviously in Iowa (her second recent trip there) because of her potential 2012 run for president, given the huge importance of the Iowa Caucus during the presidential primaries. Yesterday she was appearing for a book signing in Spirit Lake, Iowa, when the press showed up. And that's when all hell broke loose.A CNN reporter tried to ask Palin the very obvious question, "Are you any closer to a decision on running for president?" A simple and immediate "No" response would have put an end to that very quickly, but is anything ever simple in the zany, celebrity-like world that is Palin? Of course not.
Palin and her "camp" actually claim that they were taken by "surprise" by the reporter's highly predictable question. And apparently so, since before Palin would even answer it, there were the following contortions and chicanery: First Palin dispatched an aide to confront the reporter. "What are we doing!?", crowed the aide to the reporter.
Next Palin joined in on the act with a meltdown of her own: "Am I doing interviews?! No! I thought I got to talk to the nice people? And where's our music and where's our good enthusiasm?" (As for why she was referring to "music," "enthusiasm," and "nice people," your guess is as good as mine).
Only after all this -- and the passage of Lord knows how much time since the reporter's question was initially asked -- did Palin finally answer the question with a simple "no." I guess she needed some time to think about it, that being such a tough, hard-hitting question and all.
This whole charade reminded me just a bit of Ted Kennedy's infamous 60 Minutes interview in 1980, as Kennedy was running a primary challenge to sitting democrat party president Jimmy Carter. During the interview, Teddy was asked the most obvious of questions: Why do you want to be president of the United States?
But in response, Kennedy stuttered and stammered around like a custodial scientist assigned Mississippi $hithouse detail right before 5 o'clock. But in fairness to Teddy, he may well have been drunk at the time. So what's Sarah's excuse?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/45920.html
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