And whether Sarah Palin or Barack Obama have it, from Victor Davis Hanson:
For most of you readers, all this is trite and self-evident. But apparently not for hundreds in politics, the media, the universities, Hollywood, and the foundations who seem to think that a fumbling nervous Obama in interviews, who grasps for a word and utters vacuous platitudes is "really" contemplative, like his Harvard Law professors; but when a Sarah Palin seems nervous under scrutiny from a pseudo-professorial, glasses-on-the-lower-nose Charlie Gibson, she is clearly an empty head with an Idaho BA.
A Ronald Reagan knew more about human nature, and thus what drives the Soviet Union than did all the Ivy-League Soviet specialists that surrounded Jimmy Carter-much less the Sally Quins and Maureen Dowds of that age. We in America, unlike the Europeans, know this intuitively, grasp that a Harry Truman figured out the Russian communists far better than did the Harvard-educated aristocrat FDR.
And the inevitable comparisons between the top of the Democrat ticket and bottom of the Republican one continue, which is part of the genius in picking her on McCain's part.
I watched the entire Gibson interview with Palin, and I saw her hesitate, but it seemed likely to me that she was hesitating because she was speaking very carefully. (When she spoke about stuff without any political implications at all, like her time on the basketball time, she was easy and fluent.)
She probably had McCain's story of his "$5 million" remark at the Warren event, and how it was taken wildly out of context and abused by Obama, ringing in her ears. I imagine her mind was racing, carefully weighing each and every word and sentence, trying it out in all possible ways, to see if someone could clip it out of context and use it against her.
Indeed, the fact that she went through the entire hour and some and made not one single mistake, gave the MSM vultures not even one tiny tidbit they could use against her, bespeaks a presence of mind, an analytical ability, and a self-control that is pretty amazing. There's no way I could do it. I'd say something that could be clipped out and put in a Democratic attack ad about 2 minutes 30 seconds in, and that would be that.
What's amazing to me is the number of people on the right, who supposedly support the woman, who have uncritically swallowed the media's spin on her behaviour. She hesitated -- but why? The media assert she was bewildered, a deer in the headlights. That's not how it looked to me. To me her hesitation was the result of the intense concentration necessary to make sure nothing you say can be used against you by vicious unscrupulous bastards taping and editing everything.
Considering how many times Charlie was misquoting her, I'm sure she didn't have to remember McCain's mistreatment.