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Today, the NY Times decided to do their own token equal attention op-ed space to William Kristol of the Weekly Standard who crosses over into the Times columns once a week. He interviewed Gov. "Sarah-cuda" Palin.
It made the Drudge Report in short order. It took Reading Between the Lines a little longer, but here it is, surrounded by lot's of great stuff you can link and send out to your email list, or blog.
The link for this specific article is:
http://kennethelamb.blogspot.com/2008/10/well-it-was-just-matter-of-time-until.html
Link! Link! Link!
Kenneth
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The Wright Stuff
October 6, 2008
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company - Used with Permission
I spoke on the phone Sunday with Sarah Palin, who was in Long Beach, Calif., preparing to take off on her next campaign trip. It was the first time I’d talked with her since I met her in far more relaxed circumstances in Alaska over a year ago. But even though she’s presumably now under some strain and stress, she seemed, as far as I could tell, confident and upbeat.
In terms of substance, some of what she had to say was unsurprising: She doesn’t have a very high opinion of the mainstream media, and she believes an Obama administration would kill jobs by raising taxes. But she said a couple of things that were, I thought, either personally touching or politically provocative.
At one point, noting that Palin had remarked ruefully almost a week ago that her son Track had been, since his recent deployment to Iraq, in touch with his girlfriend but not his mother, I asked whether she had subsequently heard from him.
Palin told me she had. “He called the day of the debate, and it was so wonderful because it was the first call since they were deployed over there, and it was like a burden lifted even when I heard his voice.” Palin said that she told him that she had a debate that night. “And he says, ‘Yeah, I heard, Mom,’ and he says, ‘Have you been studying?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I have,’ and he goes, ‘O.K., well I’ll be praying.’ I’m like — total role reversal here, that’s what I’ve been telling him for 19 years.”
That was Palin the hockey mom — or rather the military mom.
As for the campaign, Palin made clear — without being willing to flat out say so — that she regretted allowing herself to be overly handled and constrained after the Republican convention. She described the debate on Thursday night as “liberating,” and she emphasized how much she now looked forward to being out there, “getting to speak directly to the folks.”
Since she seemed to have enjoyed the debate, I asked her whether she’d like to take this opportunity to challenge Joe Biden to another one.
There was a pause, and I thought I heard some staff murmuring in the background (we were on speaker phones). She passed on the notion of a challenge. But she did say she was more than willing to accept an invitation to debate with Biden again, and even expressed a preference for a town hall meeting-type format.
Since their debate drew more than 70 million television viewers — some 20 million more than watched John McCain and Barack Obama the week before — I trust that various civic associations, universities and media organizations will have invitations in the mail to Biden and Palin pronto.
And, really, shouldn’t the public get the benefit of another Biden-Palin debate, or even two? If there’s difficulty finding a moderator, I’ll be glad to volunteer.
Palin also made clear that she was eager for the McCain-Palin campaign to be more aggressive in helping the American people understand “who the real Barack Obama is.” Part of who Obama is, she said, has to do with his past associations, such as with the former bomber Bill Ayers. Palin had raised the topic of Ayers Saturday on the campaign trail, and she maintained to me that Obama, who’s minimized his relationship with Ayers, “hasn’t been wholly truthful” about this.
I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?
She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”
I guess so. And I guess we’ll soon know McCain’s call on whether he wants to bring Wright up — perhaps at his debate with Obama Tuesday night.
I asked at the end of our conversation whether Palin, fresh off her own debate, had any advice for McCain. “I’m going to tell him the same thing he told me. I talked to him just a few minutes before I walked out there on stage. And he just said: ‘Have fun. Be yourself, and have fun.’ And Senator McCain can do the same.” She paused, and I was about to thank her for the interview, but she had one more thing to say. “Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ”
And maybe I’d add, Hockey Mom knows best.
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