Analyzing for content

Over at headsup: the blog fev takes a look at what Palin said, instead of the manner in which she said it. The results aren't encouraging - for her, or for the "breathless" media that covered her. As always, it's an incisive and dead-on post, well worth your time. Here's a sample:

Driven by that sort of narrative, coverage of the Palin speech tends to settle into a pseudo-argument about "experience" -- specifically, what kind of experience is better than what other kind. That tends to bury some much more interesting issues that the speech itself suggests. Experience, for one thing, isn't the same as aptitude. And, as every hiring editor knows, there are people with 20 years' experience and there are people with one year of experience 20 times.

What could we have talked about instead? ...

Here's the script:
To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

And her reading, per the Fox transcript:
To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world’s energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil discoveries and its deliveries of that source, Americans, we need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

The stumble isn't the problem. The problem is that the Freep draws the following conclusion on its front page:
She showed a firm grasp of key domestic issues, including energy independence and tax policy.

Suggesting a larger problem: What in this poorly read effort from the White House speechwriting team suggests any kind of firm grasp of any kind of issues? Evidently, she has hold of the idea that Venezuela is a major national security threat. Let's look at some more:

Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?

Well, not really. He's sort of on the record as favoring hot pursuit across borders with regard to the said terrorists -- which all of a sudden seems to be the policy of the current administration too. Reading them their rights is conditional on catching them, but given that, it seems like a fairly low-cost way to maintain a little standing in the eyes of the world.

You starting to think the "story line" should move a little away from whether a candidate has some form of executive experience and toward whether the candidate has the faintest freaking idea of how the world works?