Sarah Palin's Political Experience

Here's the new McCain ad buy on Sarah Palin's political experience:

The Politico has the background story, via Memeorandum:

Mounting a ferocious defense of his embattled running mate, John McCain said he is buying a TV ad arguing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has more experience than the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

In an effort to rev up conservatives, a campaign statement issued a list of critical media mentions that it called “smears” of Palin, who speaks in prime time at the convention Wednesday night.

The campaign announced: “The McCain campaign will launch a television ad directly comparing Gov. Palin’s executive experience as a governor who oversees 24,000 state employees, 14 statewide cabinet agencies and a $10 billion budget to Barack Obama’s experience as a one-term junior senator from Illinois.”

The ad is what the campaign calls “a forward-leaning effort to counter the shameless smears that have prevailed during Gov. Palin’s introduction to the American voter.”

Senior adviser Steve Schmidt gave Politico a statement saying the campaign will have no more comment about the vetting process, which was the subject of more critical coverage in Wednesday morning’s papers...

Check the link for Schmidt's statement.

But see Howard Kurtz's piece at the Washington Post as well, where he reports:

I've talked to many political professionals over the years who were mad at the media, or me in particular.

But I've never quite had a conversation like the one Tuesday night with Steve Schmidt.

He was absolutely furious as he unloaded on the journalistic community for, in his view, unfairly savaging Sarah Palin.

Sure, it is in his interest to try to get the press to tone things down. But Schmidt - a hard-headed, no-nonsense, on-message strategist - really sounded shell-shocked. And so he was saying things on the record that senior aides usually say only under a cloak of anonymity.

Apparently, Schmidt says Sarah Palin's "under seige" by the waves of media speculation on the alleged teenage pregnancy cover-up, not to mention every other unhinged leftist smear that gets pick up as "mainstream" news by the press.

Well, it's double-standard time all over the place (here and here, for example).