The New York Times published a piece this morning offering a glimpse into the steps taken by the McCain campaign to prepare Palin for Thursday's debate by literally having her cram for the exam.
Speaking from experience, she's in deep, deep trouble.
Ms. Palin is getting ready for the debate at a time of enormous uncertainty about a highly complicated issue, the unfolding crisis on Wall Street, which makes preparing for the face off especially hard.
And the McCain campaign appears to be leaving nothing to chance. Ms. Palin will spend her preparation time at Mr. McCain’s vacation compound in Sedona, with her husband and children. She is practicing for the debate with Steve Beigun, a former staff member of Mr. Bush’s National Security Council; Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy aide; Mark Wallace, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign; and Ms. Wallace, who was a communications director in the Bush White House.
It's the money quote that raises not only concern, but which, for me, brings pangs of recollection:
Ms. Palin has traveled with a briefing team since Sept. 10. Two people close to the campaign, addressing her difficulties, said she had been stuffed with facts as if preparing for an oral exam and had become nervous and unnatural in the few interviews.
Advisers said she was a diligent worker and was frequently up until the small hours of the morning in her hotel room trying to cram as much information as possible before the debate.
I say "pangs of recollection" because, like most lawyers, I remember the weeks leading up to the bar exam. The bar exam is, with the possible exception of defending a Ph.D. thesis, the most stressful examination one can take. It is Hell.
The Virginia bar exam, which was the first I took, contained 22 topics. The exam covered everything from basic civil procedure to such arcane areas as secured transactions under Article 10 of the Uniform Commercial Code. One had to be conversant in diverse areas: the same person could be asked, in the span of three hours, to describe the advice one would give to a client who had been arrested for cocaine possession (and please include in your answer the avenues of appeal if convicted) and to describe the Byzantine rules of intestate and bequest inheritance under the English common law rules of trusts and estates ("No interest shall vest, if ever, except within 21 years of a life in being..."--a phrase that will send a shiver up the spine of every attorney who ever had to study future interests).
It takes weeks of daily bar exam preparation classes, hundreds of hours of outlining and memorization, and mindnumbing cramming just to pass a three hour written essay exam. And 40% fail on the first attempt (fortunately, I was not among them, thank God).
And yet, compared to the subjects of domestic policy and international affairs, the bar exam is a cake walk.
Sarah Palin is learning everything anew.
She may learn some phrases and jokes and one-liners and basic, one-dimensional talking points. But I think there is little chance she will learn it sufficiently to be conversant with Gwen Ifill.
Not compared to Joe Biden, who can chat this stuff up with a regular ole voter on the Amtrak (and I have seen him do it, with the fluidity of a college professor speaking on a subject about which he has published four books).
And not, I suspect, under the circumstances she will face. There, on a stage, in front of a live audience, and knowing that her words are being judged by an audience of literally millions watching with unparallelled interest.
The bar exam, and this debate share the same test in common. You either know it, or you don't. You can't fake it. If you try, you fail.
"Up until small hours in a hotel room, cramming."
Just the thought of it is enough to make me almost sympathetic for Sarah Palin, who is without question the singlemost unprepared candidate for national office ever.
Almost sympathetic. Almost.