Who's missing?

By Ron Beasley

Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Biden will all be on the Sunday talk shows but Sarah Palin won't be.

As is The Ticket's custom, a post listing the entire roster of appearances on this Sunday's interview programs will pop up Saturday at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT).

But here's an advance heads up, in part because of who WON'T be found on any of the chat shows.

Three of the four now-official candidates on the major-party presidential tickets are scheduled to sit down for questions: Democrat Barack Obama on ABC's "This Week," his running mate, Joe Biden, on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Republican John McCain on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Absent from this list, of course, is the GOP's star of the moment, the not-so-long-ago obscure governor of Alaska who is McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin.

Since she was thrust onto the national stage a week ago, her appearances on it have been tightly regulated by the McCain campaign: a few side-by-side campaign stops with him and, of course, her big speech to the GOP's convention Wednesday night.

Shaun Mullen reminds us this is day 8 of the Palin Cone of Silence Watch.

It has been eight days since vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been allowed to say anything in a public setting that is not carefully scripted or controlled. No interviews. No taking questions from the news media. Palin has read one prepared statement twice and delivered an address written by George Bush's speechwriter.

McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace asserts that voters don't care if Palin can answer questions about foreign and domestic policy, let alone the string of troubling allegations that cling to her shoes like so much oily kelp washed up on a beach in Alaska.

What does the campaign not want us to know about a woman whom fate may dictate becomes the next president? What is it trying to hide? How much longer will Palin be kept inside this Cone of Silence?

Tim F at Balloon Juice has the answer I think:

But. The guy is a campaign flack managing an embarrassment. You have to assume that he’s shading the truth to cover up something worse. Taking a wild guess, the answer most likely has to do with Palin’s problem with telling the truth. In her short time on the national stage Sarah Palin has lied about practically everything. She lied about opposing the Ketchikan bridge, she lied about selling a state plane on eBay and about making a profit on the sale, she lied about visiting Ireland (her plane refueled there), she lied about fighting lobbyists and pork (she set a record for both), she lied about Obama’s legislative accomplishments.

More, it now appears indisputable that Palin lied her moose hunting ass off about inappropriately using her authority to fire Alaska’s public safety chief. The public record already has more than enough proof that she lied to the Alaskan people about not putting pressure on the commissioner to fire her ex-brother in law. Then she lied about cooperating with the commission. This poses a vexing problem because even Larry King or Chris Wallace have to bring this up and there is literally nothing that Palin can say. If she repeats her earlier denials the evidence will damn her now and the looming investigation report will damn her even worse. The only credible answer would be to come to Jesus on national TV, except that she risks admitting to an impeachable offense.

She can’t lie, she can’t tell the truth. I don’t envy the campaign for the tough spot that McCain’s rash decision left them in. At the same time I don’t much sympathy for Alaska’s lying, power-abusing tinpot Bush.

And the longer Palin avoids the press the deeper they are going to dig.

Comments

[Fledermaus]

shorter GOP: "nobody here but us chickens"

[Redhand]

I hope the first question McSame is asked tomorrow is why his VP choice is hiding from the media.