e-mail me at billdeg@umich.edu

10/06/2008

good cop bad cop

If Obama wins, what happens to Palin? Does she have regrets about being a 'Hail Mary' pass? Sure, now she commands a high six-figure honorarium for speakin' engagements in the lower 48. Does she have a political future? Given the desperation and cynicism behind her nomination, does she feel used?

What I wonder most of all is how she might feel on November 5 and beyond about the good-cop bad-cop game John McCain is playing with her. McCain says Obama's ex-pastor is off limits. Palin, who is on video with her own minister exercising witches, questions McCain's hands-off attitude and goes after Rev. Wright. (I have no beef with Palin's beliefs--as long as she doesn't impose them on public schoolkids--but the irony deserves mention.) For the next four weeks, Palin's job is to call Obama unpatriotic and traitorous and untruthful.

Make no mistake, her dissent from McCain is orchestrated. She captures headlines every time she "questions" the top of the ticket. Political theater. She is Dennis Franz to John McCain's Jimmy Smits. We're perps in the interrogation room, noses bloodied, and she just pushed a steno pad at us and barked, "write down what happened!" Maureen Dowd is the FCC cracking down on too many bare asses and uses of the S word during the show...What? Enough with the NYPD Blue metaphor? Okay, fine.

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