Neoconservative The Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, in the first post-election Fox News Sunday, said his sources told him (on the famous question items involving NAFTA and Africa being a country vs. continent) that she made slips of the tongue during a rapid-response series of questions after a hard day of interview/debate preparation, i.e., confusing NAFTA with CAFTA and responding "Africa is a country which..."
This appears to be a more plausible explanation and context than Sarah Palin's own comments on the leaks or the pro-Palin apologists whom have been in a state of denial. Indeed, any serious study of the human performance literature reveals that even experts will make mistakes (but at a lower, constant rate): authors may misspell words, comedians can blow punchlines, etc. You need to look more at the nature and context of the mistake. For example, novices tend to focus on surface-level phenomena whereas experts read for meaning and will automatically adjust for noise like misspellings. That's why authors will often have other people proof-read their manuscripts.
I'll give an example from experience. In the early 1980's, one of my professors, Maryam Alavi, had a prototyping manuscript accepted by the prestigous Communications of the ACM. She asked me and a colleague to check the galley proofs. One of the more critical errors I came across was a sequencing issue with her footnotes; she had used Likert scale items in her study questionnaire and intended to cite the standard Likert source, but the target source was listed under a different, unrelated footnote number. [Unfortunately, Dr. Alavi did not wait for my edits, and my corrections were not caught by the other person, so the sequencing issue is in print.] Obviously Dr. Alavi knew what Likert scaling was. She probably made some manuscript changes to accommodate reviewer comments, and the footnotes were not resequenced properly. This was not a more conceptual error, e.g., confusing the types or proper utilization and interpretation of scaling techniques.
There is good reason to question, as Bill Kristol does, adverse human performance under degraded conditions, e.g., a surgeon or pilot operating without enough sleep, etc. However, the nature of the error determines its significance. For instance, if she grouped the US with Central American countries and called the relevant trade agreement "NAFTA", that's the equivalent of an innocuous typo. If she's mixing-and-matching the parties to NAFTA and CAFTA, this suggests a more serious problem of internalizing the concepts of NAFTA and CAFTA, and hence her knowledge is more rote memorization. I'm less concerned with whether Palin could list all the nations in Central America than in the concepts underlying CAFTA, e.g., opening up Central America to more U.S. goods and services, that CAFTA was a followup extension under the Bush administration following the passage of NAFTA under the Clinton administration, and part of an ongoing series of trade initiatives in the Americas as we look to extend to South America (including the current Colombia trade pact under consideration).
Kristol's conclusion that the leaks were a cheap shot is clearly assuming Sarah Palin's mistakes are of the frequency and nature that anyone, even an expert, might make under those conditions and Sarah Palin is just being unfairly singled out, that the other 3 candidates probably have made their own unreported embarrassing mistakes in debate preparation. Well, of course, we know about Obama's 57 US states, Hillary Clinton dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, and Biden's discussion of a Presidential television address in 1929.
The problem I have with Kristol's assessment is that Palin's public responses have been too problematic for the allegations to be dismissed as a typical innocuous error. Her responses often come across as stream of consciousness; she'll often restate the question in a response without really answering a question on the conceptual level.
For example, Couric asked Palin a question designed to probe whether the bailout funding would crowd out funds available for tax reductions or relevant government programs: "Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?" Palin's response included the following statement: "But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the--it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans." Ultimately the bailout is about health care reform? She's not talking about, say, bank lending freezes that might affect companies meeting payroll or consumers unable to buy because credit lending has been cut back. Couric was talking about families unable to find the discretionary money for health care insurance, doctor/hospital bills, etc., not even health care reform so much. So where did Palin get "health care reform" from? I don't recall a crisis involving widespread bankruptcies and failures of health insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, etc. How will health care reform shore up our economy? Did Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail because of speculation in health care real estate? The only explanation is that Palin made an inference of health care reform because Couric mentioned families needing to find money to pay their medical bills. This is not a simple slip of the tongue; it's a conceptual error. Palin seems to be trying to bridge from words cherrypicked from Couric's question to her own talking points, but she's doing so in an incoherent manner.
So my guess is that the NAFTA and Africa responses were more indicative of the stream of consciousness response described above and the leaks were campaign staffers also exasperated with her rogue and diva behavior which they considered uncharacteristic and unworthy of someone running for higher office. And I agree. The GOP will never again nominate Sarah Palin for national office. She's probably popular enough to get reelected in Alaska and maybe one day she may run for the Congress or U.S. Senate. There is no doubt she's very popular; Georgia US Senator Chambliss credits her for bringing out the crowds across the state just before his impressive victory in Tuesday's runoff and calls her a rock star. But I haven't seen a poll where she's put together bigger than, say, 30% in early straw poll, despite massive recent publicity, and largely unknown Bobby Jindal has already picked up 15%, with a well-rounded experience as a Congressman, administrator, and Louisiana Governor and (unlike Palin) very articulate. Right now it looks as the only purpose Palin would have in a 2012 primary campaign is to siphon off support for Huckabee if he chooses to make a second try.
Favorite Palin Jokes
My two favorite Palin jokes were both delivered by NBC late night show host Conan O'Brien:
"Alaska's largest newspaper has endorsed Barack Obama despite the fact that their governor is Sarah Palin. Luckily for Palin, it's one of the 500 newspapers she doesn't read."
"President-elect Barack Obama spent the day thanking the people who helped him win the election. Yeah, and actually, Obama's first phone call was to Sarah Palin. He sent her flowers."
