Finger on WHAT button?

Sarah Palin made her unscripted debut on ABC News this evening, sitting down with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson for the first of at least three interviews, and she sounded much like a high-school kid trying to shovel his way to 500 words on an essay. Lots of filler and generalities in trying to sound Vice Presidential against the onslaught of a few tough questions from Gibson on Iraq and the Russia/Georgia conflict (she did stick to her laugh-out-loud assertion that because Alaska is next to Russia, that counts as foreign policy experience. As a poster commented on E. J. Dionne's Washington Post blog "Here's a question for Sarah. I live near the ocean, does that make me a marine biologist?")

But hiding in the weeds, so to speak, was a clue, and a telling one, about Sarah Palin. Here was Gibson's question about Iran and Israel and her response (no video of this exchange exists online yet, though it should soon, and italics and phonetic spelling are mine):

GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?
PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuc-u-lar weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.


Sound familiar? Sure it does. We have a sitting President who has been pronouncing it "nuc-u-lar" for over eight years now. There probably isn't anyone on his staff with the balls to correct him, but you know teacher Laura and the twins have chided W on that white-trash term for as long as he's been saying it that way. Yet, he has never corrected it in subsequent speeches or appearances. Couldn't be bothered. George W. Bush is no idiot, despite seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but he is stubborn.

You, gentle reader, have certainly made similar pronunciation mistakes in your life and once you realized your error, you have made a mental note to correct yourself, right? I know I have.

Don't you think that among Sarah Palin's handlers there isn't at least one of them who caught that nuc-u-lar boner and said to her "Sarah, that is a lightning rod for them to call you stupid. You have got to fix that!"

Maybe Sarah decided it wasn't that big a deal, or worse, that there was nothing wrong with saying it that way. Maybe she just thinks that it's "folksy."

But I am guessing that Sarah Palin, like the current Worst President Of All Time No Matter How Many Presidents We Have Down the Road, is just stubborn and arrogant.

Hopefully on January 20, 2009, she also won't be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.