The NYT editorial page, Dowd, Herbert and Rich all excoriate Palin, esp. her performance in her first major TV interview with Charlie Gibson (OK, maybe it's a little piling on, but she so richly deserves it!).  Despite being prepped nonstop for a week, she still fell on her face.  Here's the NYT editorial:

 

September 13, 2008

Editorial

www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13sat1.html

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.