DSPQ And Republicans

September 13, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under News media, Republican Party, Richard Nixon 

Enlightening and irritating. Too bad Charlie Gibson didn’t ask Sen. Obama about his favorite color and Stevie Wonder album. And yet I suspect the irritation. The double standard applied to the inexperienced Gov. Palin compared to the inexperienced Obama makes me want to accept everything about her unquestioningly, as a one-person counterweight to the injustice of it all. How’s that for a vanity? It’s also unhelpful, reactive, undiscerning. In fact, we want and need her to be conversant with the key issues and policy questions. Obama, too, even if the MSM don’t care quite as much.

So Gibson’s done her a favor, showing what she’ll be up against in every MSM setting and giving her the experience of being in a heavyweight arena. She’ll learn from that. She’ll be better next time. Someday soon, she may be better at it than any of them — and we’ll have Gibson to thank. I wonder if that will please him.

As for the DSPQ part, Dennis Prager likes to point out that Republicans run against two opponents: Democrats and the media. That’s less true in this era of diffuse media authority, but still, Republicans who want to complain about it all the time should find another line of work. She’ll either master this moment of super-scrutiny or she won’t. If she does, she could be a factor in U.S. politics for the next 25 years. She may come to value the process of earning her stripes, unpleasant though it will be. Six Crises, anyone?

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