In a sharp reversal in tactics, Sarah Palin read a newspaper yesterday, and the McCain campaign is arguing that this should lay to rest any doubts about her qualifications for the vice presidency.
Speaking in a Colorado airport hangar, the Republican vice presidential candidate proudly proclaimed to her assembled supporters, "I was reading my copy of today's New York Times."
This was a dramatic change for Palin, who last Tuesday couldn't name a newspaper she had ever read when queried about in on national TV. Elaborating on her decision to read newspapers, the Alaska governor explained that she had read the New York Times because "they are hardly ever wrong."
Even with this sudden move to the political center, Palin sought to reassure her supporters on the right by completely misunderstanding the Times article she was referring to. The candidate described the front page article as confirming that Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists," when the point of the article was to show that this assertion (which is the basis of recent anti-Obama TV ads) was false.