An awful lot of my correspondents — including at least one who says they're voting the McCain-Palin ticket — have been trying to convince me I've been way too charitable towards Ms. Palin. Maybe so. All of them admonish me for not mentioning an obvious reason she did better in the debate than she did in one-on-ones with Charles Gibson or Katie Couric: No follow-up questions. Good point…and it's yet another reason why these "debate" formats don't serve the interests of the voting viewers. Anything a candidate says oughta be tested with at least a little cross-examination.
We have, of course, an example. In the debate and also in her recent speeches, Palin has criticized Obama for saying that U.S. troops in Afghanistan have killed civilians. Here she is yesterday, speaking from the safe haven of Fox News…
I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars. (AUDIO GAP) that he's made about the war that I think make my world — disqualify someone from consideration as the next commander in chief. Some of the comments that he's made about Afghanistan, what we're doing there, supposably, just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That's reckless and I want to talk about things like that.
That's quite a charge. Obama is smearing our soldiers by making this questionable or even false assertion. It cries out for a follow-up question like, "But isn't Obama just saying the same thing that our Secretary of Defense has admitted?"
Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered the people of Afghanistan his "personal regrets" Wednesday for U.S. airstrikes that have killed civilians and said he would try to improve the accuracy of air warfare, the imperfect fallback for U.S. commanders who say they don't have enough ground forces for the deepening Afghanistan war. "As I told them, I offer all Afghans my sincere condolences and personal regrets for the recent loss of innocent life as a result of coalition airstrikes," Gates said after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder."
One suspects that if civilian casualties have reached the level such that Gates felt it was necessary to apologize, they must be pretty bad. But even his words taken at face value validate everything Obama has claimed. So, Governor Palin, what's the deal here? Is our Secretary of Defense out there smearing the troops and offering apologies for deaths that didn't happen?
I can understand that no one at Fox News is likely to ask her that question. Let's see if anyone ever does.