The Palin Shield Should Surprise No One

Call me unsurprised. When Sarah Palin was tapped about a month ago to be John McCain's #2, we theorized that Team McCain would subsequently shield Palin from any and all substantive probing until the election, knowing full well that Palin would not be able to answer even the simplest probes on domestic or foreign policy from a sharp press corps. (And no, Charlie Gibson, Sean Hannity and Katie Couric are not substantive or serious.) A lot of people scoffed at this view, incredulous that a major party candidate would just decide not to answer any scrutiny whatsoever. Ah, one should never underestimate the survival instinct of purely self-interested political parties. Yesterday's mini-revolt from media outlets angry at a lack of access to Palin was silly. The press, and anyone else for that matter, should have expected this behavior for day one, and should act surprised today, after weeks of the same.

The McCain campaign has never had any other option. Not only is Palin completely unqualified to discuss even uncomplex matters, Palin has likely never really considered or pondered any of the serious issues of the day. She has never had the need, and clearly she is not terribly intellectual curious. That is the difference between her and someone like Mitt Romney or Bobby Jindal. All politics aside, they are both bright men with a wealth of knowledge on policy issues Sarah Palin had probably never seriously thought about up to the day she was selected. (In fact, one could argue, she may not even be thinking about them much now, given her intellectual depth).

Sure, you can hammer a bunch of broad, meaningless platitudes into an uninformed politician's head so they can regurgitate on command. That was what the Gibson "interview" was all about. But with someone as clueless as Palin, you can only go so far. Team McCain knows this, and following her sad performance with Gibson, they have probably decided simply to never let her talk to any real media at any time over anything serious. The veep debate is an exception, but again, what else could they do -- back out of that? They were stuck there, so they watered down the debate rules to ensure there would be no opportunity for any banter or back-and-forth, restricting it to be a stale affair where Palin can hopefully just survive on her memorized cliches.

In order to combat what has become the louder and louder drumbeat from the media on the outrageous Palin shield, the McCain campaign has fallen back on an old reliable strategy for Republicans: attack the messenger, in this case the "biased, left-wing" media. The media is of course biased in McCain's eyes simply because it wants to ask Palin questions, but for a desperate campaign, what other option is there?

The point of all of this is simply that no one should be surprised. Yes, Palin was a politically astute pick, and it kept McCain in the game at a time when he was dying a slow political death. But given her rank ignorance on the issues that matter to Americans outside of Alaska, the campaign has had to resort, by necessity, to having Palin act as McCain's rally side-kick, spewing regular campaign invectives, and occasionally staging "serious" meetings with national and international leaders in order to bolster her credibility by means of the photo-op.

As patently absrud, and quite frankly insulting as this tact is, Team McCain has never had any choice. What a spectacle.