One of my Friday predictions failed to come true this morning. I expected Joe Biden to show up on Meet the Press and open up with a zinger along the lines of, “since I’m apparently the only one running for Vice President who talks to the press…” But he didn’t.
Joe Biden is facing the problem of the young lion. I still have a vivid memory of a nature show on cable where a yearling lion discovered a tortoise wandering near the shore. The lion leaps to the attack, but the tortoise pulls its head and legs inside the shell. The lion is able to bat the shell around at will, but finds no way of solving the puzzle. He knows that if he could only get the darned thing open he could kill it in moments and have a small feast. But you can’t fight an opponent who won’t come out and take a swing.
Biden seems to be in a similar situation with Sarah Palin. There are no signs that Rick Davis will allow her to emerge from her upcoming isolation chamber on the Northern Exposure set any time soon. It’s tough to fight an opponent who won’t step into the ring. Still, he did manage to fire the first salvo in trying to draw her out this morning.
“She’s a smart, tough politician,” Biden told Tom Brokaw in a “Meet the Press” interview live from Wilmington, Del. “So I think she’s going to be formidable. Eventually, she’s going to have to sit in front of you like I’m doing and have done. Eventually, she’s going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she’s going to have to answer on the record.”
But will she? Currently the McCain-Palin team is enjoying a bounce from the convention and is either even or ahead of Obama and Biden, depending which polls you read. Will Davis risk a deer-in-the-headlights moment for Palin if they continue to lead? Biden won’t be able to do it alone. The media is surely just as annoyed as he is, if not more so. But if they meekly continue to ignore the fact that she is sequestered, America at large may not notice. Stranger things have happened in American politics.
UPDATE: Apparently the pressure is already having some effect, since Palin will likely sit down to talk with Charles Gibson of ABC “at some point” after she returns to Alaska. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the conditions for that meeting are debated.