Doug Wead uses his Oct. 1 Newsmax column to devise a novel excuse for Sarah Palin’s dismal performance in her interviews with Katie Couric: Ted Kennedy couldn’t handle unscripted questions either.
No, really:
It is stunning to see the emotionally charged hatred of the media toward Sarah Palin. Of course, Wolf [Blitzer] had seen such moments of ditziness. Ted Kennedy cannot do interviews well. His handling of handpicked, family friend, Roger Mudd’s softball question in November 1979 cost him the presidency. It was a moment far more deadly than [CNN’s Jack] Cafferty’s desperately hyped vignette of Palin and Couric.
When I interviewed Ted Kennedy several years ago, all my questions had to be submitted in advance. When after the scripted interview he showed me around his office, I asked him something about his children’s drawings on the wall and the whole room froze in horror.
An unscripted question.
I can still see the daggers in the eyes of the staffers. I almost blurted out, “I withdraw the question; I withdraw the question. I didn’t know.” But we all lingered while he painfully groped for an answer. And I felt very, shamefully guilty.
So now we’re supposed to believe Palin is like Ted Kennedy, whom Wead goes on to describe as having “of the most stellar careers in the U.S. Senate”?