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NEW YORK CITY: Sarah Palin spent Wednesday in Republican “boot
camp” cramming for this week’s vice presidential debate amid
mounting concern over whether she is ready for a White House post
and calls for her to quit the ticket.
The first-term governor of Alaska will face off
in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday (Friday in Manila) against the
Democratic vice presidential pick, veteran Senator Joseph Biden, in
their sole clash ahead of the November 4 election.
With some Republicans fearing a fiasco, the
telegenic but inexperienced Palin is undergoing several days of
intensive debate training at the Arizona ranch of presidential
nominee John McCain.
In a time-honored tradition of the White House
race, Biden was also spending time off the campaign trail preparing
for the key debate.
What US media dub Palin’s “boot camp” will
continue right through Thursday, with senior McCain aides and former
White House operatives coaching her and cramming her with facts.
McCain, 72, also sought to help Palin navigate
the media minefield, chaperoning her in a new CBS interview and
indicating that Palin, 44, could emulate past presidents Ronald
Reagan or Bill Clinton.
In a joint appearance on CBS television on
Monday, McCain and Palin aimed to reverse the damage done by her
earlier interviews, widely lampooned by the popular US comedienne
Tina Fey on the Saturday Night Live television show.
Interviewed jointly by Katie Couric, who
questioned Palin alone in the earlier sessions, McCain intervened
during a difficult question about whether his running mate had
contradicted the party’s platform on Pakistan.
Palin had been criticized for telling a voter at
a rally that the United States should be free to launch raids inside
Pakistan in search of insurgents, after McCain rebuked his
Democratic opponent Barack Obama for saying the same thing, warning
that it was wrong to give notice of such attacks.
‘Gotcha’ journalism
But McCain blamed the controversy on what he
called aggressive “gotcha” journalism and interrupted when
Couric asked Palin if she was sorry for having created such a stir.
The Arizona senator pointed to other state
governors who had limited national exposure when launching their
bids for the White House, yet went on to become heavyweight
presidents.
“I remember that Ronald Reagan was a
‘cowboy.’ President Clinton was a governor of a very small state
that had ‘no experience,’” McCain said.
Palin, a political unknown before she was picked
by McCain on August 29 to be his running mate, has on the whole been
kept shielded from the national media.
A devout Christian and mother-of-five who is
fiercely anti-abortion and a paid-up member of the National Rifle
Association, Palin electrified McCain’s campaign after being
plucked from the obscurity of the far north.
She became the poster girl of the Republican
right at the party’s convention in early September and stole
Obama’s thunder as the freshest face on the political landscape.
But in recent days she has faced widespread
ridicule for the few interviews she has given, including for citing
Alaska’s proximity to Canada and Russia as giving her a solid
grounding in foreign policy.
She was also unable to give a coherent answer on
how to resolve the financial crisis, and her reply, almost
unaltered, was mimicked by Fey in a clip that has gone viral on the
Internet.
Democrats and much of the media have assailed
not only Palin’s alleged lack of readiness for White House duty,
but McCain’s lack of judgment in choosing her.
Resign calls
More worrying for McCain is that noted
conservative figures are now joining the barrage of attacks.
Writing in the conservative National Review,
columnist Kathleen Parker said Palin should step down.
“Palin’s recent interviews with Charles
Gibson [ABC News], Sean Hannity [Fox News] and now Katie Couric have
all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate who is
clearly out of her league,” Parker wrote.
“As we’ve seen and heard more from John
McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a
problem,” she added.
On climate change
Also on Wednesday, Palin said global warming is
“real,” but stressed that it “kind of doesn’t matter”
whether or not humans are to blame for climate change.
Human activity has “contributed to the issues
that we’re dealing with now with these impacts” on the earth’s
climate, Palin said in an interview aired Tuesday (Wednesday in
Manila) on CBS News.
“I’m not going to solely blame all of
man’s activities on changes in climate because the world’s
weather patterns are cyclical, and over history we have seen changes
there.
“But it kind of doesn’t matter at this point
in the debate what caused it. The point is it’s real, we need do
something about it.”
In interviews prior to McCain tapping her to be
on the ticket, Palin has said she does not believe global warming is
a man-made problem, putting her at odds with McCain.
-- AFP
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