Interviewing

Greg Sargent:

The lengths the McCain campaign is going to in order to shield Sarah Palin from questioning are reaching truly comic dimensions.

Check out this nugget from the pool report, via Jonathan Martin, on John McCain and Palin's meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko:

McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin ("Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?") but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.

Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say "No."

Palin can't even be allowed to answer a question as basic as this?

As you know, over the past couple of years I've interviewed dozens of candidates for office. I'm not a pit bull (with or without the lipstick) about it, but I think I generally ask substantive questions about relevant issues. Nobody I've ever asked to speak to has refused to sit down with me and go on the record. Many of them are running for downballot offices and are happy to get the opportunity to let voters know who they are and what they have to say. I think the contrast between them and the Republican nominee for Vice President is pretty stark, don't you? I'm just saying.

On the other hand, well, maybe the less said really is the better.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 27, 2008 to The making of the President