On Palin getting worse

Sullivan:

Crowley has a theory as to why. Chris Orr offers his own thoughts. My own view is that the Hannity interview doesn't count as it was an infomercial. And Gibson was pretty easy. Couric may have rescued her career with that interview. In other words: There's no Palin decline. There was nothing to decline from. There is no there there but ambition, fundamentalism and a bizarre personal life. And the pressure of her countless lies - especially about her personal life - must be beginning to tell. My own view is that she is such a massive joke she will kill the ticket; but if McCain asked her to withdraw, it would so destroy his own record of judgment, he would also lose. So we have two scenarios: either they struggle on, keep the Schmidt fireworks to distract from reality, and hope that racism and Christianism will somehow get them to the finishing line - or we start all over with Romney. But it's getting too late to switch GOP candidates.

I don't think the Palin problem is fixable. She is who she is: an unqualified fundamentalist liar with no nowledge of or experience in national domestic or foreign policy. And McCain had absolutely no idea who she was when he picked her.

I too think this helped rescue Couric's career. I never liked her as an anchor, but this interview showed the usefulness of having one woman interview another. No one can pretend Couric was sexist/demeaning/disrespectful/professorial, as they did with Gibson.

UPDATE: Fallows delves into the pain. Read the whole thing, if you can manage it. He concludes:

Two natural reactions are: to laugh at the "Putin rears his head" part, and simply to avoid concentrating on the rest. But given her candidacy for national office, neither of those is enough.

I am not aware of any other current figure in national politics -- by which I mean any member of the Senate or House -- who would do a worse job under questioning. There could be some I don't know about. But they're not on a national ticket.

For my part I'm beginning to think the "L" in Palin is superfluous.