Politics

PR First, Country Second: A McCain Campaign Retrospective

By Anne Landman

On her January 12 show, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reviewed a portion of the new book about the 2008 Presidential election, Game Change, by political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. The section was about Sarah Palin. The authors discuss Palin's prep and tutoring for the campaign trail, and conclude that "her grasp of rudimentary facts and concepts was minimal." They allege Palin didn't know why North and South Korea were separate nations, didn't know what the Fed does, and couldn't explain who her son, Track, was going to fight in Iraq. Maddow played a video clip of Palin, taped during her appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show shortly before Maddow's show that same night, in which Palin admitted that she didn't know who perpetrated the 9-11 terror attacks against the U.S. In another clip, Palin was giving a speech to American troops as they prepared to ship off to Iraq. In her speech, Palin suggested Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11, even though her campaign prep team had carefully explained to her the day before her speech that Iraq was not involved in planning or perpetrating 9-11.

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Full post as published by PR Watch on January 14, 2010 (boomark / email).