It was a month ago on 9/11 that I posted my imaginary interview (see “The Real McCoy”) with Senator McCain. Since then, his running mate, Governor Palin flubbed a few sit-downs with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and CBS’ Katie Couric. Consequently, the McCain campaign decided that Palin was off limits to the mainstream media until after the election. However, the American public was given to understand that Governor Palin would still meet with conservative and small town wannabe journalists. Unfortunately, I am not your average Joe Sixpack pundit that the Governor would be comfortable with. In fact, I am that potent combination of a liberal with an Ivy League graduate degree – so I am pretty sure that she won’t talk to me. Alas, as I did with Senator McCain, I need to fake my interview with the lovely Ms. Palin. So here goes…
Jack: It’s a pleasure to meet you in person…
Sarah Palin: Can we get started? I have half-a-dozen of you wannabes lined up this morning, and you are only my first.
Jack: OK! Back in June you told Larry Kudlow of CNBC that you were not sure “what is it exactly that the VP does every day?” Now that you have been a VP candidate for over six weeks, do you know any better?
Sarah Palin: Well, if I am so blessed, and Senator McCain is so blessed… I expect that he has a role in mind, which will fulfill the maverick image that he and I have earned as two mavericks. We will reform Washington as two outsiders on a mission to…
Jack: But, Sarah. Excuse me; can I call you, Sarah? You see I have this joke, I mean, this question lined up later on that requires me to call you Sarah. So is that OK, Sarah?
Sarah Palin: Whatever, Jack? Your interview is not going to make it into the mainstream media, anyway, so you can call me whatever your puny readership desires…
Jack: Thanks, Sarah! But you just called Senator McCain an outsider when he has been a beltway insider for, like 26 years… what’s up with that?
Sarah Palin: Jack, Jack, Jack… Senator McCain has always been an outsider to members of his own party. In fact, he was going to pick that matzo ball, Lieberman, as his VP. Oops, silly me, cross that matzo ball thingy as off the record. Never mind, no one is going to read you, anyway… so, you see McCain has always been on the inside looking out!
Jack: But that still makes him an insider, so how is he going to reform anything?
Sarah Palin: Because he is going to bring all these outsiders and mavericks into Washington and reform the place. The man’s a maverick just like me…
Jack: OK, moving on… at a recent campaign rally, you said of Joe Biden, “I've been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, the second grade.” Sarah, Joe Biden entered the Senate in January 1973, when you were almost nine years old. At nine, most kids are in fourth grade, so did you like repeat…
Sarah Palin: Jack, I was joking… but seriously, what have you heard?
Jack: That you went to six different colleges before you graduated from your “own private Idaho?”
Sarah Palin: Ha! Ha! Very funny, Jack! What else you got?
Jack: Have?
Sarah Palin: What?
Jack: What else do you have?
Sarah Palin: Whatever…
Jack: Your older sister, Heather Bruce, told Glamour magazine recently that “What’s happening to Sarah Palin right now is like the worst college exam cram period ever.” Do you believe this is a fair way – essentially pulling a few all-nighters – to land a heartbeat away from the presidency?
Sarah Palin: Hey if Dubya got by for eight years, so can I. Besides, it can only get better, right? (At this point in my interview, Sarah concludes her answer by winking her left eye at me).
Jack: Are you trying to seduce me, Ms. Robinson?
Sarah Palin: Say what?
Jack: You just winked at me, so I remembered that famous line from “The Graduate?”
Sarah Palin: That movie was, like, so before my time…
Jack: Never mind. Let’s move on. In a recent campaign appearance you said that Senator Obama is “palling around with terrorists.” Don’t you think that was beyond the pale?
Sarah Palin: In what respect, Charlie?
Jack: I’m Jack…
Sarah Palin: Sorry, I had a flashback to Charlie Gibson for a moment there … Hmm… beyond the pale… Jack, are you making fun of my last name? Todd is standing right outside… he does not like people who make fun…
Jack: Sarah, ‘beyond the pale’ means over the top…
Sarah Palin: Then why didn’t you just say so, like we do in small-town America? Did you go to one of those fancy Ivy League schools like Obama?
Jack: Do you think it’s fair to associate Obama with a guy who was a terrorist forty years ago, when Obama was only eight?
Sarah Palin: Yes, because the guy helped launch Obama’s political career more recently back in the mid-90s.
Jack: So that is the same as “pallin” around? Sarah, your husband was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party from the mid-90s until 2002. Isn’t your husband’s recent association with a secessionist party more egregious than Obama serving as one of the members of an education board, which happened to include a long rehabilitated ex-terrorist?
Sarah Palin: What’s your point, Jack? The people of Alaska still voted for me as their Governor.
Jack: Hey, maybe they all want to hook up with Russia! Who knows? Fifteen years from now I could say that I was “pallin” around with you just because of this one fake interview?
Sarah Palin: Hey, I am not looking beyond this election right now. Fifteen years is a long time in politics. What else you got?
Jack: Is it true that you told Bill Kristol that you wanted Senator McCain to take the gloves off?
Sarah Palin: Sure. He needs to bring up that Wright stuff, too!
Jack: I don’t think you want to go there, given that you are all over YouTube getting exorcised by a witch doctor from Africa?
Sarah Palin: Oh well, that pastor was getting rid of my demons, not demonizing my country!
Jack: What demons?
Sarah Palin: That’s personal, Jack.
Jack: OK. I would like you to answer this last question without using any one of the following words: bridge, maverick, reform, surge, victory, and exceptional. OK, why do you think Senator McCain will make a better president than Senator Obama?
Sarah Palin: Umm… because he always puts his country first!
Jack: But, you heard Obama say at his convention speech, “We all put our country first..."
Sarah Palin: I’d love to debate you, Jack, but that was your last question. Hey, Todd, can you show Jack out the door and send in the next wannabe… and get me an aspirin…
Jack: Thank you, Sara… When you build your house, call me home…
Sarah Palin: What? Todd, this guy is weird…
Todd Palin: That’s Fleetwood Mac, honey…
Jack: Don't stop (thinking about tomorrow)…
Folks, she could actually turn out to be our next Vice President! And you thought it couldn’t get any scarier after Cheney!
