In Prague, President Obama declined to engage Sarah Palin’s schoolyard taunt (literally) of his new nuclear policy. Here is the transcript from ABC News:
QUESTION: Sarah Palin, taking aim at your decision to restrict the use of nuclear weapons. Your pledge not to strike nations, non-nuclear nations, who abide by the nonproliferation treaty. Here’s what she said. She said, “It’s unbelievable, no other administration would do it.” And then she likened it to kids on the playground. She said you’re like a kid who says, “Punch me in the face, and I’m not going to retaliate.” Your response?
OBAMA: I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin’s not much of an expert on nuclear issues.
Speaking today at the meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Council in New Orleans, Sarah Palin struck back.
Now, the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer, as a part-time senator, and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.
The crowd loved it. Perhaps the most notable part of the exchange is the dynamic it sets up. Palin now lives entirely in a particular type of primary campaign mode, thanks to the tea party movement and the permanent insurrection on Fox News. Obama, who was once too an act in that ring, is operating on a different plane, where problems must be engaged with nuance to be solved, not captured in a laugh line. The two political giants simply talk past each other. And my sense is that it will be like this for quite a while.