Sarah Palin’s Crib Sheet

Every politician has their own style. Hillary Clinton in her [2008 campaign] meetings, for example, demonstrated an incredible knowledge of material, above all in the sections dedicated to taking questions from the audience. The questions came in cascades and often went on for an hour or more, and even if they were posed by supporters of the then-candidate and now secretary of state, they covered virtually every aspect of the political, economic and social life of the United States.

So Hillary Clinton had the answer to everything in her head. Sarah Palin, however, has the answer in her hands. Literally. This Sunday, at the “Tea Party” convention, the probable 2012 presidential candidate opened her left hand too wide during one of the public sessions.

Wide enough so that the pitiless cameras were able to catch a series of words written on the palm of that hand: “energy,” “tax,” “lift American spirits” and “budget cuts” (this last one crossed-out). Perhaps the most surprising thing is that these were not sophisticated notes with percentages about energy policy, public debt or the number of troops in Afghanistan, but just basic talking points.

A little later, during the question and answer session, when the founder of the “Tea Party” organization, Judson Phillips, asked her a question, Palin looked openly at the palm of her hand before answering. Evidently, Palin knew the answer “like the palm of her hand,” as they say. For her appearance at the event, the champion of plain old everyday Americans collected $100,000. Each member of the audience had to pay $300.

The anecdote is even more significant because Palin has sarcastically criticized Barack Obama for his constant use of the teleprompter, a small television screen from which the president usually reads his speeches, and to which he became “addicted” to from the first moment of his campaign. The ex-governor of Alaska has described Obama as “a charismatic guy with a teleprompter.”

Palin’s “crib sheet,” a beloved reminder of what we used during biology or art history exams in high school, was not the only anecdote about the ex-governor of Alaska. Sunday, in an interview with Fox News (for whom she works as a political analyst), she declared that she is considering running for president in 2012.

In the same interview, Palin gave a demonstration of her cold political calculation when she said that Barack Obama could only be re-elected if he declares war on Iran. Palin did not say that Obama should attack Iran for electoral motives, but that only in this way (or “doing whatever he could to help Israel” in a wave of bombardments against the Islamic Republic) could he “change the dynamic” politically in the U.S. and be re-elected.