Tucker Bounds & Campbell Brown

Reader gs was nice enough to locate this video of the brouhaha between Campbell Brown and the McCain Team’s Tucker Bounds. I’m sure it’s going to get lots of attention.

My take: McCain either needs to get Bounds up to speed very quickly or cut him loose. He should have been ready for Brown’s questions, and he should have been ready for her rather obnoxious “Jane Curtain Weekend Update” tone (a little nasally, there, too). He clearly wasn’t. Her questions were fine; her tone was really pretty snotty, as were her expressions.

As I wrote here in the comments section:

…I suspect the McCain crew is reeling a little bit from [the new hostility] they’re seeing from the press and the left; he’s always thought they were reasonable people who were his friends, right?

Still, the bottom line is: Palin has to be able to sell herself. No one’s spokesman can do that job. I think she can do it….But I must say, the tone of the McCain statement [in canceling with Larry King] was all wrong. They can’t “demand” that the press “come to terms” with Palin. They can demand, however, that the press give them a smattering of the respect they’ve given Obama and his team; McCain has certainly earned it. [His camp might even suggest that the press] perhaps, show the same “open mindedness” about Palin’s “foreign expertise” as they do about Obama…if they want to.

Clearly they don’t want to…McCain (and hence his team) has still earned the right to their basic courtesy and respect

I mean…basic courtesy and respect is only professional. Campbell, with her “All right, Tucker…I’m just going to give it to ya, baby,” really did not manage that. Can you imagine how the press would hate it if, say, Dubya – with his penchant for such banter – had said such a thing to anyone?

Let’s see how Palin does with her speech tonight, and how the press responds. She’s had a real baptism of fire, and one hopes she has not been watching much tv or reading much of the blogslime about her. If she stays cool and collected and does what she did last Friday (yes, she only came to national prominence 6 days ago) she should be fine.

And let us admit: it will be remarkable and revealing – and almost miraculous, considering the onslaught of hate that has greeted her – if she does manage to repeat last Friday’s great performance.

Then we’ll see how the press reacts, and whether their heads explode or they manage to be professional about her.