Did the Dam Just Break?

Item: John McCain’s pushes back (declares war?) on the New York Times for their report on Rick Davis’ connections with Fannie and Freddie. McCain goes on CNBC and denies that Davis had any dealings with Fannie or Freddie. And breaking tonight Newsweek and the Times drop bombshells, flatly contradicting McCain. The criticism starts in earnest.

Item: The continued sheltering of Sarah Palin reaches a high (low?) point, as the McCain camp attempts to prevent reporters from being in the room as Gov. Palin meets with various world leaders. CNN threatens to pull its reporters, and the McCain camp relents…for all of 29 seconds. Campbell Brown launches a blistering editorial, accusing the McCain camp of sexism for not allowing Gov. Palin to answer questions.

Item: National tracking polls have trended in Obama’s direction after McCain received a decent bounce after his convention. State polling in key states (with a few exceptions) have begun to move Obama’s way as well, with Florida and Virginia in particular looking evermore promising. And breaking tonight we have a bombshell of an ABC poll which will have the chattering class talking tomorrow:

Not Ready for Prime Time

How fitting that Saturday Night Live returns this weekend, with Senator Obama joining the most famous not-ready-for-prime-timers. And we have Sarah Palin, in her most (only) important interview to date doing (to keep the SNL theme going) her best Ashlee Simpson impression. The reviews are in, and they aren’t pretty:

At times visibly nervous, at others appearing to hew so closely to prepared answers that she used the exact same phrases repeatedly, Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of “anticipatory self-defense.”

-NYT

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin sought Thursday to defend her qualifications but struggled with foreign policy, unable to describe President Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against threatening nations and acknowledging she’s never met a foreign head of state.

The Republican vice presidential nominee told Charles Gibson of ABC News in her first televised interview since being named to the GOP ticket that “I’m ready” to be president if called upon. However, she sidestepped on whether she had the national security credentials needed to be commander in chief.

-AP