George W. Bush volunteered his services to help Sarah Palin prepare for her only VP debate with Joe Biden Thursday night.
The White House has released this photo of the secret session:
Sarah Palin has been very faithful to George W. Bush in her limited public remarks. Many Bush insiders are working feverishly to prepare her to appear fully qualified for the role of Vice President.
Palin team stocked with Bush veterans
By Politico's Jonathan Martin
>snip<</p>
With Sarah Palin facing unrelenting press scrutiny and enjoying off-the-charts excitement from voters, John McCain’s campaign is quickly moving to augment her staff and put in place an infrastructure that can address the unexpected wave of interest.
This team of aides and advisers is tasked with preparing Palin for media appearances, including her first on ABC later this week, her debate against Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden early next month, pushing back against near-daily accusations from liberal activists as well as inquiries from mainstream journalists. They are also offering the sort of support provided to any vice presidential pick
>Snip<</p>
This new team of aides and advisers brings years of experience in Republican politics, and includes many who worked for President Bush in the White House and on his two campaigns. They will bring a similarly aggressive mindset as campaign chief Steve Schmidt, also a veteran of the disciplined Bush-Cheney effort. In this, they’ll move to get off defense, a position Palin has been in since her unexpected announcement, and try to keep her on the offensive, using her to launch ever-more sharp attacks against Barack Obama and Biden—attacks that will present the challenge of responding without being labeled sexist.
>Snip<</p>
Numerous McCain aides are involved in the preparation, and staffers stressed that all under the McCain-Palin umbrella were operating as one unit.
Traveling with her and working with the press are Tracey Schmitt and Tucker Eskew. Each is taking a leave from private sector public relations-related jobs to work the final stretch.
Schmitt worked on both Bush campaigns and ran the Republican National Committee communications shop before leaving a year ago to work for a biopharma company. Eskew is a longtime GOP strategist who was a top aide in the first Bush campaign and later worked in the White House before co-founding his own public affairs firm.
They’ll be joined at times by Nicolle Wallace, the former White House communications director who has served as a senior adviser to the McCain campaign since spring. Mark Wallace, Nicolle Wallace’s husband and another veteran of Bushworld, will lend a hand to Palin by prepping her for the lone debate against Biden, Oct. 2 in St. Louis.
Offering policy counsel will be Steve Biegun, a seasoned foreign policy specialist who did stints as a senior member of Bush’s National Security Council and as national security adviser to former Sen. Bill Frist, when he was Senate majority leader. He’s taken a leave from his position as a government affairs executive at Ford Motor Co.
Also helping on the policy front is Joe Donoghue, a longtime McCain aide who has worked for years in the Arizonan’s Senate office. He’ll travel with Palin and serve as a liaison to the campaign headquarters on issues.
>Snip<</p>
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/...
(F)ormer Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote on his National Review blog, "George W. Bush had very slight executive experience before becoming president. His views were not well known. He won the nomination exactly in the same way that Palin has won the hearts of so many conservatives: by sending cultural cues to convince them that he was one of them, understood them, sympathized with them. So that made everything else irrelevant in 2000 - as it seems again to be doing in 2008."
But in the end, Frum wrote, Bush lacked "important aspects of leadership which is how we got into the mess from which he needed to rescue the country and himself."
Source:Sarah Palin: George Bush In Lipstick? @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...