Time to Put Up or Shut Up

Tonight, two weeks after she was revealed as Sen. John McCain’s GOP running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will sit down for her first media interview with ABC.

It’s about time. It’s well past time.

When not drawing massive crowds (it remains to be seen how large these crowds will be now that the two have gone their separate ways; I imagine McCain’s numbers will fall while Palin’s remain steady), Palin has been cloistered away, submerged in a maelstrom of GOP advisors and staffers desperate to bring Palin up to speed on current issues and foreign affairs. Of course, that’s not what the Republicans are saying, but anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see what’s going on.

While Palin’s minders intone about keeping her away from the media until it can treat her with the “level of respect and deference” she deserves (deference being an interesting choice of words seeing as how it connotes going beyond respect to acceptance and surrender to another’s opinions), it is obvious that they are desperate, in these few short weeks, to fill in her woeful lack of understanding. If this were not true, she would have begun taking questions from the press weeks ago, rather than continuing to barnstorm the country with the same exact speech day after day and then immediate be hidden from view.

There are definite signs the press are tired of the stonewalling. Each day, more details about Palin’s past are being revealed. Did she put that jet up on Ebay? Yes. But it didn’t sell. She got rid of it elseware, at a hundred thousand dollar loss and not the significant gain McCain insisted on. Did she kill the “Bridge to Nowhere”? Yes, but only after Congress abandoned it and it became politically untenable to support. Before that she was a proud supporter. And afterwards, she continued to pile on $223 million in the kind of federal pork she so vehemently opposes now. Is she fiscally responsible with Alaska’s money? While her office drastically cut spending when compared to her predecessor, she billed Alaska taxpayers for more than 300 nights of travel per diem — when she was at home, sleeping in her own bed. It can be argued there were mitigating circumstances. So let her argue. Palin, who said her children are not political tools and called for privacy when it comes to her family, will be turning her son’s deployment to Iraq into a political event. This is the same woman who derided the press after they began publishing stories about her pregnant daughter — never mind the fact that she had just issued a press release about the situation.

Sarah Palin is tough, the GOP says. Because she can give a speech filled with zingers? Prove it. Sarah Palin can take the heat, the GOP says. Because she feigns offense and cries sexism every time someone stands up to her? Prove it. Sarah Palin is smart, the GOP says. Because she can recite facts written down for her by Bush speechwriters? Prove it. Sarah Palin is transparent, the GOP says. Because she’s been telling lies and half-truths about the very maverick, reform-minded ideals she touts day in and day out? Prove it.

Tonight is Sarah Palin’s chance to prove to the nation that she is all of those things. And she may well be. But she has to prove it. McCain and Co. have to cut the apron strings and let her wade into the fray on her own. She has to face and answer the sort of blistering, complicated, shockingly complex questions with which the potential leader of the free world must wrestle.

It’s high time Gov. Palin speaks for herself. It’s high time she answer her own hard questions. We know she can give a good speech. We know she has become the sort of glittering celebrity the GOP once loathed in their opponent. But it’s time to sit down and prove that she is more than a frontierswoman folk hero. If she can indeed hold her own, so be it. Tonight’s interview must be the first of many.

Are you qualified, governor? Prove it. It’s time to put up or shut up.