From last night’s “All-Stars.”

On Obama’s falling approval ratings:

Well, the president has a problem, and that is that charisma is a wasting asset. And he is wasting it. He is out a lot, much too much. Presidential aura is something that you husband and you watch very carefully, and he has been spending a lot of it.
The other problem is even if he weren’t accelerating the dissipation of his charisma and that aura, it would happen anyway when he enters into the presidency because he has to do real stuff. And what’s defeating him is reality over his rhetoric.
Three things: stimulus, cap and trade, and health care. Stimulus, he blew a hole in the budget that is a trillion dollars wide. There is nothing to show for it. And it created a panic in the country and in the Congress about deficits.
So as a result, when he comes along with health care, there’s an obsession, I think a correct obsession, with revenue neutrality–how much is it going to cost and what is it going to do? And there’s no way to make the numbers work on health care.
On cap-and-trade, he’s got a monstrosity on his hands. He presents a bill in which you want to auction off pollution rights–you can argue it’s a good or bad idea–and create a market. Instead, his people in Congress give away almost 90 percent of the permits as patronage and political favors.
So he’s got a disaster on his hands as a result of the reality of what is in the bills. You can hide it all in rhetoric, but once it gets in legislation, you can’t hide anymore.

On Palin attacking the media in her resignation speech:

Well, it’s absolutely true that she has been terribly treated by the media, unfairly, on a scale rarely seen.
Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s productive for her to attack the media:
(a) it’s not going to change anything.
Secondly, her coverage is…the oxygen that she lives on. She will be covered all the time the way no one else is. Has there ever been a losing vice presidential candidate who got a tenth of her coverage? The answer is no. It is a love-hate relationship. But it benefits her in a way.
And thirdly, when she complains about it, it has a whining quality like Nixon in ‘62 in which he said to the media “I won’t–you’re not going to have Dick Nixon around to kick around anymore.”
So she doesn’t need that. She is a political star. She really is a phenomenon.
And I repeat again and again, and I know it sounds condescending–she needs the discipline to study up on stuff if she is going to be a major presidential candidate.
She has her constituency. It will be there, but it isn’t enough.
And it is not a matter of becoming a philosopher or speaking like Obama in all kinds of complexity. It is simply studying the major issues. If she could do it, she really could be a strong candidate.