Tucker on ABC: Palin 'Nixon Without the Policy Knowledge or the Experience'

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Sarah Palin hasn't had it as tough as Hillary Clinton and at her Friday announcement Palin “came across as petty and vindictive. Richard Nixon without the policy knowledge or the experience,” Washington, DC-based Atlanta Journal-Constitution political columnist Cynthia Tucker contended during the roundtable on Sunday's This Week on ABC. Both George Stephanopoulos and George Will pointed out, that after Nixon said “you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore,” he came back and won the presidency twice.

Tucker, who oversaw the paper's editorial page from the early 1990s through last month and won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007, charged: “If Sarah Palin thinks that she's had it tougher than anybody else, she's been more harshly criticized, I have for two words for her: Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was savaged for eight years.”

Two of Tucker's comments on the Sunday, July 4 This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

The simple fact of the matter is if Sarah Palin thinks that she's had it tougher than anybody else, she's been more harshly criticized, I have for two words for her: Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was savaged for eight years. There were even jokes about her daughter Chelsea, who was much younger then than Bristol Palin is now. It's not fair, it's not a good part of the political process, but that is the stage. You take a lot of criticism, and quite frankly, women take a lot of criticism. So if she isn't ready for that, then she doesn't need to be playing on the national stage. And if she thinks it's tough being Governor of Alaska, it would be a whole lot tougher being President of the United States....

The one thing that came across, I thought, was not only that she was smarting from all this criticism, but she came across as petty and vindictive. Richard Nixon without the policy knowledge or the experience. And I think that that comes across from her time and time again. And again, if you're not ready to put up with all that criticism and shrug it off, then you don't have any business on the national stage.