Katie Couric - Sarah Palin Interview

For anyone interested, here is the Sarah Palin - Katie Couric interview:



I don't know. She didn't come off very well to me. She didn't come off very well to a lot of people whose opinions I trust. I am really unsure how she comes off to the voters they are trying to attract though.

It starts out with her essentially deriding anyone who has travelled internationally before the age of 43 as the children of elitists. It ends up with her reducing her conception of our relations with Israel, Syria and Iran down to "good guys" and "bad guys." Somewhere in between she half insulted Henry Kissinger. And she and her boss continue to refer to Putin as the head of Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, not Vladimir Putin, is the President of Russia. While the now Prime Minister is widely assumed to be the one still calling the shots in a Cheneyesque sort of way, it is bad form to not at least pay some lip service to the actual President of Russia. It might piss him off if you continue to refer to Putin as Russia's leader.

Anyhoo, I was deeply unimpressed. Again, I am a tough crowd. I wonder how this played to Main Street?

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

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Carter to Meet with Hamas

The Washington Post has a piece on former President Jimmy Carter's plan to meet with Khaled Meshal, the head of the militant group Hamas, next week in Damascus, Syria.



The McCain camp was apparently quick to condemn the meeting while the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were, understandably, somewhat more muted in their criticism.

There are, as the article points out, good reasons to open a dialogue with Hamas. And many, both in Israel and America, believe the time has come to stop isolating the militant group and start bringing them into the mainstream political fold.

However, Carter's trip would also come at a time when a growing number of experts in the United States and Israel have argued that isolating Hamas is not productive. A poll published in February in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that 64 percent of Israelis favor direct talks with Hamas. Both Efraim Halevy, a former head of the Mossad spy agency, and Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former foreign minister, say Hamas can no longer be ignored.

A bipartisan group of foreign-policy luminaries, including former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, issued a statement before the Annapolis peace talks sponsored by the administration in November that said "we believe a genuine dialogue with the organization [Hamas] is far preferable to its isolation."

President Carter continues to go his own way on Middle East issues. Considering his track record on such things (sans Iran), is it really wise to assume that the man is off his rocker?

I am not in favor of rewarding militant terrorist groups. Never have been. Things and organizations change, however. Even as recently as twenty-five years ago you would never have convinced me that the PLO and Yasser Arafat should or could ever be seriously be negotiated with.

When the choice is between continued political isolation, with continued violence, and cautious diplomatic approachment with the possibility of eventual cessation of hostilities, which way is the proper course? No, we don't want to "reward" militant terrorist groups but neither can they always be ignored entirely if we wish to have peace any time soon.

Talk is good. That is a lesson that the Bush administration is slowly but necessarily learning. It is to bad their learning curve was eight years. President Carter had it down much more quickly than that.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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