Moving to a Partisan Press and...???
Is Sarah Palin's choice to avoid the press during her VP run an aberration, or the path of the future?
Let's sort this out a bit. First, while I respect the frustration that Andrew Sullivan expresses over the situation, I think it's fair to say that Palin's strategy leaves reporters with a set of bad choices. She's clearly decided that she's only willing to talk to reporters on her own terms, so they're faced with the unpleasant choice of either granting her a softball interview and trying to sneak in a little serious questioning, or refusing her terms, in which case she'll only be interviewed by a sympathetic partisan press. Add to that a market incentive (Palin sells), and one can understand why reporters have pulled their punches in the rare chances they've had to speak with her. That's not to say it's the correct choice -- only that reporters have only bad choices.
So, is the Sage of Wasilla winning? Is she "getting away with it"? Well, that's where it gets interesting. For her troubles, Palin is massively unpopular. Pollster.com has her at favorable/unfavorable averages at 35/52...that's pretty awful. For a comparison, Romney is at 32/33; Obama is currently at 52/40. What Sarah Palin has done is to retain the extremely strong support of a fairly small number of Americans. But that's probably something she would have even if she was giving interviews! Meanwhile, her media strategy is obviously doing an absolutely terrible job of selling her to anyone outside that small group. Granted, in my view the product is at least as much of the problem as is the sales campaign, but then again all anyone is asking here is whether she's liked (as opposed to the much tougher sell of whether one would want her as president), and she's failing on that one, too. It doesn't mean that she could never reach the presidency, if that's what she wants, but it's hard for me at least to see that the press strategy is helping her get there. |
