Female Surrogates on Face The Nation: Transcript (9-14-08)

Women surrogates for the two presidential candidates debated on Face The Nation. Read the full transcript (pdf).

SCHIEFFER: Congresswoman Schultz, has she been asked to clear some bar that a male candidate wouldn't have been asked to clear?

Representative DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (Democrat, Florida): That's just utterly ridiculous. When you have a question about a female candidate's family and whether they are going to be able to, you know, balance work and family, then I think that Governor Swift is absolutely right, that that's out of bounds. I've been asked that question as a mom trying to juggle both things and, you know, typically a male--a male candidate wouldn't get asked that. But all Sarah Palin is being asked to respond to is whether she's up to the task, and it is absolutely fair game. And all I've seen is her being asked about her background, her experience, what qualifies her to be vice president and whether she knows anything. So the tough questions that have been asked of Sarah Palin thus far just have been about the fact that she doesn't know anything and isn't ready to be vice president. That's fair game and it has nothing to do with her gender.

SCHIEFFER: You're saying she doesn't know anything, or you're saying that's what she's been asked about?

Rep. SCHULTZ: Well, she's been asked what she knows. She's been asked to demonstrate her foreign policy knowledge, which she clearly has very little based on the Charlie Gibson interview. I mean, she didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was, she really had almost no grasp of America's foreign policy. She really knew very little about domestic policy. Quite honestly, the interview that I saw and that Americans saw on Thursday and Friday were similar to when I didn't read a book in high school and had to read the CliffsNotes and phone in my--and phone in my report. She's Cliff-noted her performance so far, and all of that is fair game. The American people deserve better than that. They don't deserve more of the same, which is what they're getting from John McCain and Sarah Palin right now.