As for Palin -- some fresh credibility problems emerge. This is campaigning on mythology, though not facts: "The teleprompter got messed up, I couldn't follow it, and I just decided I'd just talk to the people in front of me," Palin said in a fundraiser Monday in Canton, Ohio. "It was Ohio."
It may have been Ohio -- but the story is simply false. "This struck many of us -- who, as she spoke, followed along with her prepared remarks, and noted how closely she stuck to the script -- as an unusual claim," per ABC's Jake Tapper. "(Especially those of my colleagues on the convention floor at the time, reading along on the prompter with her, noticing her excellent and disciplined delivery, how she punched words that were underlined and paused where it said 'pause,' noting that 'nuclear' was spelled out for her phonetically.)"
"Reporters who saw the equipment that night say -- and the party has not denied -- that any teleprompter issue was minor at most. In the days after the event it was touted -- on a hush-hush, off the record basis -- by top Republicans as a way to show how swift-thinking is their newest star, despite her avoidance of any and all unscripted moments on the trail," Elizabeth Williamson reports for The Wall Street Journal.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson dares utter the L-word: "What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed -- and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a word? . . . Maybe the Legend of Sarah Palin has become, on some level, more real to her than actual history."
New York Times columnist David Brooks dares question her readiness for the job: "Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."