Palin passes the teleprompter test

Charisma goes only so far. The real test of a candidate comes when she has to answer the hard questions based on her own record.

Sarah Palin looked strong in her speech to the Republican Convention because she can read well from the teleprompter. I believe she has experience with that and television cameras from using her college journalism degree to be a sports newscaster.

We know we can’t judge the actual speech, just the delivery, because the GOP speechwriters had said earlier that they had had to change the one they had in the can because they had expected a male candidate. (Think Joe Lieberman – turncoat Democrat now calling himself an Independent but leaping at the chance to speak badly of Democrats at this convention -- since he was supposedly McCain’s first choice.).

Palin may be showing personal charisma at the moment, but McCain is going to pay dearly for the extra baggage that is just now starting to be piled onto the counter.

When she brags about her experience, remember that she was the mayor of an itty-bitty town. “According to the census bureau, the definitive source of US population figures, the last census tally, in 2000, revealed a population of 5,469. The bureau's 2007 population estimate, is 9,780 residents. The difference between the two figures is huge, approximately 79% growth, but there is no disputing it's a small town, approximately one-twentieth the size of Barack Obama's Illinois state senate district,” according to Daniel Nasaw, in Deadline Today, GuardianUSA (from the British publication). Another source indicated the town has had a 66.9 percent increase in population since 2000. She was mayor from 1996 to 2002, so it was around the lower figure at that time.

To use just one local example, Bay Village had 16,087 residents in the 2000 census (Wikipedia), about three times that of Palin’s town. She said she didn’t have to have focus groups, etc., because she’d been in the PTA. Since she was dealing with her tiny home town, one could see how everyone certainly should have known her!

So far as her being governor, the population of Alaska is 670,053 people. The population of Cuyahoga County is 1,314,241, about twice that of her entire state. Any one of our county commissioners exerts greater executive powers.

Also, how did she show her executive abilities? A “$15 million multi-use indoor ice arena was supposed to be her legacy as the mayor. This was a very big deal for a city that had a budget of $3.9 million in 96 (increased to $5.8 million in 2002). Although the city subsidy has gone down from the initial $600k per year to about $125k per year, the sports complex still does not break even,” according to Will Rogers in The SunSpot ( http://sunspot.mercedsunstar.com/?q=node/4816)

That might make one think of North Olmsted Mayor Tom O’Grady’s attempt to place an $18 million recreation center on the ballot this year. It would have been funded by a one-eighth of a percent income tax. A major difference is that I think North Olmsted already owns the land it would have been built on.

Rogers said the sticking point in Wasilla, Alaska, "was the process of how the land was acquired. The whole thing was handled with exceptional incompetence and arrogance, ultimately costing the city an extra $1.7 million in settlement and court cost for a piece of land that would have cost only $125k if they had handled it right from the beginning in 1998.”

Check the other Cleveland blogs since it's all Palin, all the time, for the moment.

The GOP has decided to use Palin as an attack dog, so that gives Joe Biden the right to bite back. I hope she knows what that means, as he is a master at it.