Below The Beltway

When you look this bad being interviewed by a lightweight like Katie Couric, you’re not going to do well under the hot lights of a full-blown press conference:

Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, the first portion of which airs tonight, won’t give Republicans any reassurance that she’s ready for prime time.

It will, however, reassure McCain aides that they’re ollowing the right course of action by keeping her shielded.

Not only did Palin say the country could be facing another Great Depression without a bailout, but she offered a painful silence when pressed about campaign manager’s Rick Davis’s ties to Freddie Mac.

And, at the end, she had no good answer when asked by Couric for examples of what McCain has done to regulate Wall Street.

First, she reminded Couric that McCain had been “known as the maverick.”

Pressed for details, Palin threw in the towel.

“I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you,” she said with a smile.

And that’s not the only example, consider what happened today during a joint appearance between Palin, McCain, and the President of Georgia:

From the pool report account of what happened after McCain and Palin’s meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilli and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko:

McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin (“Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?”) but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.

Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say “No.”

Why is the McCain camp being allowed to get away with shielding this woman like this ? Why should she be any different from any other candidate for national office ?

She’s been the Vice-Presidential nominee for nearly a month now and she’s sat down for a total of three interviews — one of them a non-confrontational lovefest with Sean Hannity — and hasn’t bothered to hold a press conference or answer a pool reporters question.

Last time I checked, this isn’t Putin’s Russia and the political class isn’t above scrutiny.

After watching the Couric interview above, though, combined with the ABC interviews from two weeks ago (here and here), I’ve got to say that it’s not surprising that the McCain campaign is keeping Palin away from the press. She’s obviously out of her element, still not up to speed on issues of national importance, and just doesn’t come across well in one-on-one interviews.

This can’t last forever, though, and at some point the public is going to start to notice the fact that the No. 2 person on the Republican ticket really doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

H/T: Brendan Loy