THE PACKAGING OF PALIN BEGINS

Jay Carney writes about a revealing set of statements made by Nicole Wallace, a senior advisor to McCain. We can expect Palin to be very carefully packaged by the McCain campaign because they really don't want her to take questions from reporters. In fact, Wallace said that taking questions from reporters isn't important because Palin can talk directly to the American people. This reminded me of a couple of things. First, all the staged town halls Pres. Fredo appeared in to sell his plan to destroy Social Security and second, the remark by a WH advisor to Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

The campaign will try to create it's own, self-serving, version of the Reality of Sarah Palin and reporters need not apply. As Wallace put it on MSNBC¹:

WALLACE: The media has called -- the media did something to this family that I`ve never seen before, in my life! And I think she took the stage last night and you know, she made her own points. She put this discussion and this race and this convention in her own trunk. And she didn`t do it by talking, with all due respect, to people like you. She talked to the American people about things they care about. How they`re going to stay in their homes --

¹MSNBC
September 4, 2008 Thursday
SHOW: MSNBC SPECIAL 7:00 AM EST
For September 4, 2008
BYLINE: Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews
GUESTS: Jay Carney, Nicole Wallace, Jim Matthews
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 7262 words
HIGHLIGHT: Governor Sarah Palin got positive reviews for her convention speech as vice presidential candidate.