Sarah Palin on President Bush and Washington: 'People aren't looking for more of the same'

One of the key rules of politics so effectively exploited by Karl Rove is this: Neutralize your weakness by making it your strength.

How else to explain Gov. Sarah Palin's readiness in the vice presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden to trash life as it has been known in George W. Bush's Washington over the last eight years?

Keep in mind: President Bush's approval rating has fallen to 22% in the latest CBS News poll. (That's one point below Richard M. Nixon's lowest rating -- the modern-day standard for trashing a president).

Oh, sure, she may give a nod...

... or two to the Bush administration. And then it's on to the changes the maverick John McCain would apply to the Washington culture. But against what would he be maverick-ing?

For one, the current policy in Afghanistan.

Palin: "... (W)hen you look back and you say that the Bush administration's policy on Afghanistan perhaps would be the same as McCain, and that's not accurate."

And the economy. It's hardly a defense of the Bush administration offered here:

Biden: "The wealthy have done very well. Corporate America has been rewarded. It's time we change it. Barack Obama will change it."
Palin: Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.

And political life overall:

Palin: "People aren't looking for more of the same. They are looking for change."

Rove may have taken a step or two back from the political front lines, but his disciples have learned his lesson.

As for President Bush himself, he watched the first half of the debate, Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto said, and thought Palin did "very well."

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Don Emmert-Pool / Getty Images

Comments

[DVS]

Palin says "People aren't looking for more of the same."... is she really so dense that she doesn't realize it's HER Republican party that has done all the damage to this country? She IS more of the same. She is as dumb as the day is long. Can't wait to see how the ongoing investigations against her go. Wink, wink.