Comparison test

All along, I've said that the best strategy for the McCain campaign in the Sarah Palin rollout would have been to put Palin into a press conference, rather than to hide her from reporters for weeks while sending "campaign spokesmen" out to defend her. Let's put that idea to the test, shall we?

Here is Sarah Palin in a Friday press conference:

And here is McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds at the GOP convention in September:

You can make up your own mind, but as for me, I don't ever want to see the name "Tucker Bounds" associated with the Republican Party again. That boy just needs to find himself a new line of work.

Infighting over Palin

Interesting revelation:

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain, was fired from the Arizona senator's campaign last week for what one aide called "trashing" the campaign staff, three senior McCain advisers tell CNN.
One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading "disinformation" about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.
"He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain's campaign message," said one of the aides.
Senior campaign officials blame Schuenemann specifically for stories about the way Wallace and chief campaign strategist Steve Schmidt mishandled Palin's rollout -- stories that the campaign says threw them off message in the critical final weeks of the campaign.

I don't know Scheunemann, but if he said the Palin rollout was botched, he was absolutely right. And one of my sources last week said that the campaign was spending more time defending Wallace than defending Palin. My complaints about the mishandling of Palin's P.R. have been numerous and extensive, but boil down to the fact that the campaign shouldn't have hidden her away from the media.

It's a basic common-sense argument: If she can't handle a press conference, how is she qualified to be vice president? And I always thought Palin was her own best advocate -- certainly she defended herself better than that idiot Tucker Bounds, who has no aptitude for media relations, period.

UPDATE: Video via Allah, who sees the campaign operatives feeding "diehard Cuda-haters":

I am pretty sure that Palin understands that Team Maverick's midhandling of the media helped cause the hostility against her, but I'm not sure that she understands the full extent of it. I swear, Hillary Clinton's press people were more cooperative and friendy.