Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Radley Balko caught yet another pre-debate screwup from the McCain campaign. You may remember that before the first McCain/Obama debate, the McCain campaign had already bought an ad with a direct quote from Rick Davis saying "McCain won the debate-- hands down." Looks like they did it again for the vice presidential debate, prematurely putting out an unfinished ad on the Washington Post website that included a direct quote from "Famous Person." Who that famous person was to be was apparently undecided, but they knew that that famous person was going to say:
She killed. It was her evening. She was the star.
Here's the ad:
And here's Peggy Noonan, right on cue after the debate delivering that exact line:
She killed. It was her evening. She was the star.
Politics
Comments
Whatever credibility Noonan had, and she has none with me, it disappoints me to see Meet the Press continuing to have her on as a relevant pundit, as they did this past Sunday.
Posted by: Michael Heath | October 6, 2008 9:57 AM
Well, well, well! What do you know? Noonan is a tool! Her credibility just took a huge hit.
Posted by: divalent | October 6, 2008 10:00 AM
McCain and Co. appear to be working overtime to lose this election. It almost makes you wonder, what deals have been made in back rooms, who got paid, and what will the fallout be 6 months after inauguration?
Posted by: Blaidd Drwg | October 6, 2008 10:08 AM
Actually, I'm not so sure about this one. The ad ran Friday morning which was after the debate and so they most likely just forgot to change "Famous Person" attribution in the ad's template to "Peggy Noonan".
It's a dumb mistake, no doubt, but I suspect it's more likely a goof rather than an unmasking of a deliberate ploy to seed the pundits with canned quotes.
Posted by: tacitus | October 6, 2008 10:12 AM
She was on the Daily Show a day earlier practically in tears decrying tactics like this. She was promoting her new book that was suppose to be about the importance of bipartisanship and honesty in politics. *barf*
Posted by: mgordon | October 6, 2008 10:14 AM
Tacitus,
It seems unlikely to me that someone got the quote word-for-word but couldn't figure out who said it. They also would've had to use "Famous Person" as their filler and someone (whether it be the same person or not) sent it on without going back and fixing it. That's a mistake I could see happening if it was drawn up maybe two or three days in advance, but less likely if it was hours after originally written.
To me, planting the quote seems more likely than misattributing it to "Famous Person".
Posted by: Odie | October 6, 2008 10:31 AM
Okay, so I take back what I said. Since the ad appeared after the debate and Noonan's comments, it is not clear evidence she was planting a quote for them. (the "Famous Person" attribution suggests that WAS the case, but it's not a smoking gun).
Posted by: divalent | October 6, 2008 10:35 AM
I've seen people saying this is evidence the quote from Noonan was given to her ahead of time by the campaign, but to me it doesn't seem like more than sloppy proofreading. The ad didn't go out till Friday morning, and the quote was Thursday night. I'd be surprised if there weren't templates ahead of time with "Pro-Palin quote"-Famous Person. This looks like somebody added to quote but forgot to change the attribution. I suppose if there were issues about when the ad needed to be given to the Washington Post that could point to the ad being made before the quote was actually spoken, but other than that it's more amusing incompetence than anything else.
Posted by: mcmillan | October 6, 2008 10:44 AM
Actually, I can totally imagine replacing one bit of filler text (the quote) and neglecting to fill in the other (the name). If you've been staring at that particular graphic already for days, "Famous Person" stops looking wrong. Also, it was probably done very late at night.
It may be a stupid mistake, but it's a very easy mistake to make.
Posted by: pough | October 6, 2008 10:49 AM
I agree with pough, what is likely to have happened is that they drew up the sidebar ad with the graphics and template text (to get the balance and layout the ways they wanted it) and then when, at the last moment, they replaced the template quote with the real one but forgot to do the same with the attribution. In the rush to deliver a whole bundle of different ads, it's not hard to see how they could have screwed up like this.
I've done this sort of boneheaded thing before myself more than once (in different contexts, of course). There are dozens of reason to opposed the McCain candidacy, but I don't believe this is one of them.
Posted by: tacitus | October 6, 2008 11:05 AM
Peggy Noonan is the same person who, when she thought the mic was off during a newscast, said something to the effect that Sarah Palin is a disaster. So the irony of her saying that "she was the star" is doubly delicious.
Posted by: Jerry | October 6, 2008 11:24 AM
I hadn't really considered that the quote was also originally filler. So I would say that it is just as likely (probably more so) that it was an honest mistake instead of a planted quote. I guess I expect that to be uncommon, when I leave an unknown in a report I make sure it's blantantly obviously that I need to fix it (using a different font color, size, adding a circle). I do make other similarly boneheaded mistakes though, so I can see how this could happen. And given the apparent disorganization of the entire McCain campaign, it should probably be expected to happen a few times.
Posted by: Odie | October 6, 2008 11:38 AM
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. --Hanlon's Razor
Hanlon's Razor notwithstanding, it seems that the forces of evil are contending mightily with the forces of stupid for control of the McCain campaign.
But we've already seen extensive computer-related incompetence from the McCain campaign, so it's not unreasonable to assume that something like this happened:
"Quote quote quotey quote. Sarah Palin quotey quote." --Famous Person 10/2/08
McCain/Palin
And then someone replaced the filler text but not the filler attribution.
On the other hand, finding out that Peggy Noonan is secretly on the payroll of the McCain campaign wouldn't entirely reorganize my understanding of the universe, so whatever.
Posted by: chancelikely | October 6, 2008 11:59 AM
In other words, I agree with all the people who made the point I was making both earlier and more eloquently than I did.
Protip: Read all the posts in a thread!
Posted by: chancelikely | October 6, 2008 12:08 PM
"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."--Hanlon's Razor
Except lately there has been so much stupidity that it gains a status all its own, especially when apologists and surrogates try to explain it all away.
I fully expect the Discovery Institute to develop a new theory of "Design Grammar," which demands that alternative theories of sentence structure balance elitist/naturalist/atheist conventional linguistics.
Posted by: Farb | October 6, 2008 12:47 PM
One more obvious argument for Screwup instead of Malice...
If they primed Noonan with the quote and had the pre-made ad in the can with the preplaced quote, why wouldn't they also included her name instead of "Famous Person"?
Of course, they might have had a dozen different primed shills to choose from saying the exact same lines, but that would have looked more than a bit suspicious.
Posted by: Foggg | October 6, 2008 1:52 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | October 6, 2008 2:29 PM
Fortunately for Palin the McCain campaign created this handy flow chart which allowed her to answer every question at the debate effortlessly: http://brainrageblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/sarah-palin-debate-flow-chart.html
Posted by: James B. Webb | October 6, 2008 4:51 PM
Slightly OT: Veterans for America have released their preliminary findings regarding the state of the Alaska National Guard. It's rather interesting....
Posted by: Josh | October 6, 2008 7:39 PM
Yes, Peggy Noonan is a shill, but on Meet the Press on Sunday, she did acknowledge that Palin is not ready to be prez. Noonan said Palin proved in the debate that she is adept in political theater but not that she is qualified for the office.
Posted by: Gerry L | October 6, 2008 10:53 PM
What bugs me is that "she killed" should be something nice to say about a US vice-presidential candidate. Or that the important thing is to be "a star" on the night.
Posted by: Paul Murray | October 6, 2008 11:53 PM
Hmm let's see the McCain campaign...
a) Can't manage to Email correctly (sent Talking Points to the wrong person)
b) Can't handle press ads correctly (as evidenced here)
SOO No problems with letting McCain and co. loose on the largest, most fragile economy in the world, or on the one remaining 'superpower' armed with all those nukes, no problems at all.
"McCain/Palin. Be afraid, be very, very afraid."
Posted by: DingoJack | October 7, 2008 12:45 AM
It would be interesting to see a poll of Meet the Press viewers vs. regular nightly news coverage, the latter being more prone to use Noonan's quotes from the debate wrap-up.
It's rare to see a biased pundit actually acting biased on Meet the Press if they are part of the multi-pundit analyis team in the 2nd half of the show.
The whole reason I pointed out my disappointment about her being a guest on the Meet the Press was her biased coverage for regular news shows. I highly doubt the Meet the Press audience needs to be educated that Palin is ill-equipped to serve as President, so her making that quip there does no harm to Noonan's party that hasn't already been done. Noonan's stating "she killed" in the NBC debate wrap-up and then providing honest analysis in Meet the Press shows her to be just as much of a snake as Karl Rove, Dick Morris, or Newt Gingrich doing a Fox News show where they are presented as the unbiased analyst.
The great ones on Meet the Press, people like David Broder, take the honesty and forthrightness from their regular day job into Meet the Press. Noonan on the other hand is forced to put on a veneer of honesty for that show alone.
I do admit Noonan is not alone in her hypocritical behavior though I have observed it's much more prevalent with conservatives than liberals.
Posted by: Michael Heath | October 7, 2008 8:04 AM
How much would she get paid for something like this?!??
Posted by: Dan | October 7, 2008 3:19 PM