Another excerpt from Katie Couric’s interview with Sarah Palin, with Joe Biden thrown in for good measure.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBt0r9Exv2I]This time, a lot of people aren’t playing fair. The way it’s been talked about on the Interwebs the last few days has been, “Palin can’t even name a single Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade!!!” But that’s not what Katie Couric asked her. What she asked was, “What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?” That’s a much tougher question than just, “Can you name any other Supreme Court cases?”
That being said, Palin’s answer is, as usual, vague, floundering, unsubstantial, ungrammatical, and practically incoherent. What she should have said was, “None come to mind specifically, off the top of my head. Any decision that takes power away from the individual states and gives it to the federal government, the way Roe v. Wade did, is wrong, in my view.” Instead, she did what she usually does: tried to make it sound like she had an answer when she didn’t.
(And, not for nothin’, but she’s on the record as disagreeing with the very recent Supreme Court decision that reduced Exxon’s liability for the Valdez oil spill in Alaska. She could have named that one. But I’m willing to give her a pass for not thinking of it, since the conversation went very quickly from Roe v. Wade and right-to-privacy specifically to Supreme Court cases in general.)
I’m glad someone put this video together of Biden and Palin responding to the same set of questions. The difference between them is considerable. Tonight’s debate should be interesting, and probably as cringe-inducing as the episode of “The Office” that it’s preempting.
