When it comes out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, whom the media is trying to destroy by ignoring her unfamiliarity with how mortage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac work. HuffPo:
Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."It should be a pretty big deal that someone who might be president has no idea how the mortgage industry functions, despite being a "genuine American" who ostensibly has some instinctual feel of these kinds of things by virtue of her distance from the Northeastern Elite. Not that this matters to our elite liberal media, who haven't given Palin's statement much attention. After all, why should a candidate have to know how much about the nature of little problems like the mortgage crisis when they're just so powerfully authentic? Or as Matthew Yglesias puts it, "all this liberal sneering at public officials for not having, you know, a in-depth knowledge of policy matters is exactly why we’re seen as out of touch."
It's not actually surprising that Palin would get confused about what costs taxpayers and what doesn't, since she's been touting her record as a fiscal conservative crusading against corruption while gleefully omitting that she left Wasilla millions in debt after her tenure as mayor.
You'd think that the media would be involved in reorienting public debate towards substantive issues. But instead the press has decided that Mark Davis is correct and that the campaign shouldn't be about issues at all, but rather about character, speeding our political conversation into a full blown reality show.
--A. Serwer
