Sarah Palin Interview With Katie Couric

Here's Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric:

Palin's performance was in keeping with her style: A down-home straight-talker who doesn't dodge a bullet. As Jonathan Martin put it:

She is what she is - not a seasoned politician who knows how to dodge every question. It's bracing but it also could be spun as normal.

Still, get ready for the reaction on the left, for example in this description (courtesy of the Demonic Conservative Ridicule Machine):

I’m still in shock over how terrible the Palin/Couric interview was. “Train wreck” is being charitable – it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks.

That's just a bit over the top, I'd say, not unlike Matt Taibbi. In fact, I'm reminded of Matthew Yglesias' comments upon learning that Palin had a tanning bed installed at the governor's mansion at her own expense:

... that’s all pretty weird. Normal Americans don’t live in Alaska, don’t experience 22 straight hours of darkness ever, and don’t own personal tanning beds. Long story short, tanning beds are about as all-American as moose stew, which is not to say not all-American at all but rather idiosyncratic elements of the culture of an odd state located northwest of Canada.

Okay, I'll spot Mr. Liberal Internationalist the moose stew, but tanning beds? Normal Americans don't own tanning beds?

Boy, if that's idiosyncratic I'll look for my students to start showing up to class sporting kafiyas and machetes.

Critics, of course, will pounce on Palin's knowledge on the economy, so note her response to Couric on the "risk of another Great Depression?"

Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on...

So is that a gaffe? Is a "train wreck" being charitable?

Maybe some of the lefties should check in with Paul Krugman at the New York Times, who's also a MIT trained economist and a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University:

With a distinct whiff of the 1930s in the air, we had better refresh our memories and relearn the basics of Depression economics.

Hmm ... looks like Palin's got some company in "Depression economics." If Krugman's as good as they say he is, then perhaps Governor Palin, with her "5 colleges and 6 years," is in fact just a bit more qualified for the vice-presidency than her detractors acknowledge.