Yesterday on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, was a guest. The topic turned to Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin:
LIZZA: Right, there are people who have views on abortion but they don’t vote on the abortion issue, right. Can I just say one thing on what you just asked Perry about? To me, this is the elephant in the room about Sarah Palin. I think there is a little reluctance from folks in the press to just say what is on everyone’s mind. That is do people feel comfortable with this woman serving as president at a time when we’re at war in two countries, when she’s been mayor of Alaska, one of the smallest state in America by population?There's a little reluctance from folks in the press to just say what is on everyone’s mind? Sure there is. That's why, as pointed out by Brad Wilmouth on NewsBusters, Newsweek's Howard Fineman claims that "Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like John Adams." And the New York Times's Maureen Dowd whined that Palin "has never even been on 'Meet the Press.'" Over at the Washington Post's PostGlobal, "a conversation on global issues with David Ignatius and Fareed Zakaria," an opinion piece on Palin today begins:
MATTHEWS: Has made one trip overseas in her life.
LIZZA: I think a lot of the press corps is a little bit reluctant to go there and to be honest about that, because, frankly, the McCain campaign has been very good at pushing back and working the refs on this issue.
The selection of another incurious, ill-schooled politician with no foreign policy judgment and a simplistic "the military can solve everything" view of foreign policy will continue the dramatic slide of the U.S.'s global influence. It will also dig us much deeper into a foreign policy hole that has already brought us to an international situation more dangerous than the darkest days of the Cold War.I have little reluctance in pointing out that Lizza is profoundly wrong, and anyone paying the least bit of attention must realize that.