Will the Real Sarah Palin Please Stand Up?

Following the GOP convention last month, John McCain’s campaign had an extraordinary opportunity to capitalize on the excitement and good will that Sarah Palin brought to the ticket. Instead, they failed miserably.

Fortunately for the McCain campaign, last night’s debate performance offered a new opportunity. Palin’s uncomfortable interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric are old news. Her grasp of policy -- albeit jittery at times -- demonstrated that she has what it takes to be McCain’s No. 2.

What she does next -- or more importantly, what the McCain campaign allows her to do next --will define whether she has what it takes to define conservatism for the next generation.

It was about a month ago when I outlined Palin’s promise and peril. My opinion is largely unchanged. Conservatives should still be very skeptical given what little we know about her. The fact that we learned little about Palin’s worldview until last night is startling. And even then, it's hard to know if those were her thoughts or someone else's words.

Last month I posed these questions:

Will Palin follow in McCain's footsteps? Or will she charter her own course that remakes the right? She seems like a great leader. So where does she want to lead? Putting aside the talking points, what is her actual, governing philosophy? What are *her* priorities? Will she be a manager or transformative?

A month later, we still don’t have clear answers.

That’s why over the next month, the McCain campaign needs to let Palin be herself. Here are three things she can do:

1. Solo town hall meetings. This would erase doubts about Palin’s inability to answer tough questions. Putting her in front of an audience that can ask unpredictable questions would show that she’s comfortable talking directly to Americans and also eliminate the media filter. It ties in perfectly with McCain’s straight talk message.
2. More radio and TV interviews. As Conn Carroll notes, putting Palin before Gibson and Couric was like sending a baseball player to the majors without any practice. The campaign’s miscue can be corrected. From now until Nov. 4 she should be doing conservative talk radio daily (she’s only spoken to Hugh Hewitt so far) and sitting down with local radio or TV journalists in the cities she’s visiting.
3. Outreach to bloggers. At the lowest point in the McCain campaign, his team turned to bloggers for a biweekly call with the candidate. McCain was only one in either party to do this regularly. It built tremendous rapport and allowed bloggers to quiz McCain about timely issues. Doing this would also put Palin in contact with her staunchest supporters and bypass conservative media elites.

The American people didn’t get to know Sarah Palin over the course of the past month. With the clock ticking, there’s no time to waste.