Like any thinking person who subscribes to the quaint notion that a functional democracy requires an educated electorate, outrage was my initial reaction to the news that the McCain camp will be keeping Palin from talking to the press for at least another couple of weeks. Andrew Sullivan captures it as well as anyone:
But I think her record is very underwhelming when you look at it, and the record is now clear that she has lied – even being forced to admit it – in public office. I also think it is simply insane that a person who could be president next January and is a total unknown to the world should somehow require being shielded from a press conference. I mean a capable candidate would be begging for an hour alone on Meet The Press, not running to ground in Alaska and taking no questions for three weeks in September before an election.
If McCain picked her, he must believe she can be president now. If she can be president now, why the hell can’t she hold a press conference?
I’m not going nuts. They are.
Even David “Axis of Evil” Frum thinks it’s a very bad idea. Yet, when I start thinking through the actual impact of an interview, I begin to realize that it wouldn’t really matter. There is nothing – nothing – that Sarah Palin could say that wouldn’t be held up as some proof of her inherent goodness, ready ability, and persecuted status by Team GOP.  And this doesn’t even take into account the demonstrated unwillingess of the press to actually demand consistent and coherent responses from candidates. Further, even *if* you could get a decent and truthful interview out of her, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that, well, Americans aren’t influenced by facts nearly so much as by the rhetoric of the campaign:
[If] there’s one indisputable lesson from the last eight years, it’s that political propaganda works exceedingly well — not despite an aggressively adversarial press but precisely because we don’t have one. Carney’s idealistic claims about the short life-span of propaganda in American democracy are empirically false: “Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 — up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds” (Washington Times, 7/24/2006); [clipping another half dozen examples of that]
[ . . . ]
This idea that she’s some sort of fragile, know-nothing amateur who is going to quiver and collapse when subjected to the rough and tumble world of American journalism is painfully ludicrous, given that — as the Canonization of the endlessly malleable Tim Russert demonstrated — that imagery is a fantasy journalists maintain about themselves but it hardly exists. The standard journalistic model of “balance” means that the TV journalist asks a few questions, lets the interviewee answer, and then moves on without commenting on or pointing out false claims, i.e., without exposing propaganda (Carney can check his own magazine to see how that sad, propaganda-boosting process works — here, here, and here). Few things are easier than submitting to those sorts of televised rituals.
And that’s just how it will go.
Update:Â All that said, it’s still worth noting that Sarah Palin is a liar, and it’s John McCain’s judgment that a liar is what he wants on his ticket.
Update II: So maybe it’ll be more than two weeks. Maybe the entire campaign. The head of McCain’s campaign told Fox News that Sarah Palin won’t be doing any media interviews “until the point in time when she’ll be treated with respect and deference.” And that’s pretty much the McCain/McCain supporter view of the roll of the press in our democracy – subserviance to their needs. And while it just appalls me, McCain’s supporters will just point to it as proof of what a great job McCain is doing. Again, different universes.
