VP debate odds.......Follow

Shit, I'd have been happy with "I thought the case to allow detainees to use the court system was flawed..." or "I thought the eminent domain case from a year or two back was a bad decision..."

I don't demand knowing exact case names or anything but, Christ, this goes back to what I said before -- she seems like she's never had even a fleeting interest in the country as a whole until late August. Complete intellectual laziness in that sphere.

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 9:37pm by Jophiel

Oh come on Joph. You know damn well you'd have been bashing her because she didn't know the name of the case. Or were you not in the camp of people bashing her because she "couldn't name what magazines she read".


You guys are predictable, that's for sure...


And on the other issue:


If she says the party line, she's just parroting the party line and gets bashed. She says something that doesn't match the party line and she's bashed again? Um... What?

So she knows that the morning after pill is a contraceptive and not an abortion. You'd think that's a positive, yet somehow she's attacked for saying that it's not a type of contraceptive she supports. Er? What's wrong with that answer? Nothing.

You're right. Expecting someone to know chapter & verse from Supreme Court cases is exactly the same as expecting them to know what newspapers they have on the kitchen table.

Silly me. I guess you got me there. Except you forgot the part where to say that Palin deftly outmanuvered this obviously biased attack from Couric by stumbling upon herself in circles while the rest of us cringed.

Because when you go into an interview expecting to discuss a particular supreme court case, and then the interviewer asks you to discuss anything *but* that one case, pretty much 100% of all people will draw a complete blank at the moment it happens.

That's why it's not done in interviews. Unless your entire purpose is to make that one person look really bad and ensure that you never interview another political candidate again. I guess Couric figures her career is so far in the dumps that it can't hurt her, but wow!

Palin was willing and able to discuss the issues at hand, but was asked instead to name newspapers or magazines. That is very much equivalent to being wiling and able to discuss the types of cases or positions she supports but not being able to name a specific case.

They are analogous. You're asking for the name of something instead of about the content. You attacked her, not because she couldn't discuss current and world events, but purely because she couldn't (or wouldn't) name the sources of that information. How is that different from being willing and able to discuss her positions on a variety of constitutional issues, but *not* being able to come up with a name off the top of her head?


The idea that you'd have given her a bye if she'd mentioned a type of case or legal concept in dispute but without being able to name a specific case seems unlikely given the amount of importance placed on not being able to name magazines...



I didn't say she deftly did anything. In fact I've repeatedly stated that she didn't handle it well and made mistakes. However, I'm granting that she did at least recognize that the question she was being asked was a trick question. She knew to be cautious with her answer, but didn't do so correctly.

There's a difference between looking wobbly in an interview because you see a trick question and don't deflect it very well, and simply walking blindly into them. While I think she's trying a bit hard not to get trapped and that's coming off as indecision or lack of understanding (her response to Gibson when asked about the "Bush Doctrine" for instance), I think that in the long run it's better than blurting out an answer that'll be used against her later.



You guys are nitpicking her performance on really minor points. I can only imagine what would happen if she let a real Biden sized gaffe out...

Different context. It's easy to come up with what you'd have said if you were there. Quite a different thing when you're the one right there.

When Flea said that, did you wait 5 seconds and then ask her to name another one? Try it next time. The mind does a neato trick when recalling facts. When you access a particular idea, you tend to start recalling stuff about it in detail. If you're asked to context switch while doing this, it's a lot harder to do.




He wasn't asked the exact same questions Joph. I've looked through the transcripts and watched several of his sessions as well, and not once does Couric move into a topic in which there's an obvious single issue at hand, and then insist that he talk on the same issue but about some other example of that thing, and he has to come up with it off the top of his head.

Find me an equivalent question in Biden's interviews Joph. It's not there. He got slowballs all the way. Not once was he asked: "Ok. Name me X, but not the one that you likely prepared for". Not once. Not even close.

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 10:15pm by Jophiel[/quote]

She totally answered which newspapers and magazines she reads:

"All of them."

Oh. And before you link the CBS page again. You're missing the context.


Biden was asked to talk about a court decision he agreed with (Roe v. Wade) and then asked to name one he disagreed with. Palin was asked to discuss a court decision she disagreed with (Roe v. Wade), and then yet another one she disagreed with.

It's the context switching that's hard to do. Ask someone about something, then ask them to name something that is the opposition conceptually and they'll have no problems. Ask them about something, and then ask them to name something else similar but not the same, and they'll usually draw a blank. The mind has already filled in the details of "Case I disagree with and why" and it becomes much much harder to then think of another one in the same category.


Biden's questions were balanced. One he liked, one he disliked. Palin's weren't. You might think that's not relevant, but it is. Again. It's much much much harder to think of a second thing you view similarly to the first then it is to think of one think you think of the opposite as the first. Our minds tend to naturally think in terms of pairs and balanced groups. We naturally think of the "best and worst", "favorite and least-favorite" kinds of structures. There's a reason why we build competitions in a way that makes them sets of opposing pairs rather then just a list with number one and two winning. Why have championships? We could just take the top two, right? But we don't. We want them to oppose each other directly because that's the way our minds naturally organize things. Pairs of opposites.


Take two groups of people. Ask the first group to name their favorite food. Let them talk about it for a minute. Then ask them for their least favorite food and some detail about that. In the second group, ask them their favorite food, let them talk about it for a minute, then ask them about their second most favorite food. Watch the difference. It's *really* noticeable. The first group will quickly and easily switch from one to the other with no real difference in detail. The second will struggle. Some wont be able to think of their second favorite food at all. It'll certainly take them longer to give their second answer.


It's the way we're wired. Again. That's why interviewers don't do that. Not in that sudden a fashion anyway. Clearly Palin has direct involvement with at least one case and presumably many many others as well. Why couldn't she name one though? Because of the way the question was asked.


Any interviewer can do it if they ask the questions in the correct order and timing, and will get similar results no matter who they are interviewing. It's nothing more than a cheap trick IMO...

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 8:41pm by gbaji

And you think she should be vice-president??

Man, you are so twisted up here in your frantic attempts to apologise for her ("It's not HER fault!! It's Couric's!!"), it's hilarious.

The other day I was talking to a guy at work about a movie he had just seen and liked and asked him what other flicks he liked. He was forced to stumble around like a drunken owl for twenty seconds before muttering some non-answer and falling over.

True story.

Now now, comparing food with SCOTUS cases isn't quite fair. We have a visceral reaction to our least favorite foods, and can rattle off things we dislike without much thought. I hate green beans and mussels and natto and olives and stale bread.

A more accurate analogy would be asking someone about their least favorite songs, or music. In this hypothetical scenario, I am equally stumped.

Fake!Couric: Why do you dislike Achey-Breaky Heart?

Me: The lyrics are kinda chintzy and lame. And it played OVER AND OVER again during some of my formative teenage years. The twangyness grates on my ears.

Fake!Couric: What other songs do you dislike?

Me: I hate all country music. It's a plague on music history. The only thing it has going for it is the pedal steel guitar, which is kinda cool.

Fake!Couric: But what specific songs?

Me: I just said I hate all country music. I don't listen to that crap. I only like them after they've been translated into Japanese and used as a theme song to an anime, or remixed into trance.

Edited, Oct 2nd 2008 12:19am by catwho

I'm sure you agree then that you'd make a ****-poor curator for the American Music Museum or some-such.