Another close debate. No gaffes, no incredible zingers.
1. Most of the one-liners that stuck with me belong to Biden, but that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me. I was paying very close attention to him. I’ve spent so much time the last few weeks fussing over Palin – I and the media both, actually – that I hadn’t developed any substantial opinions of him.
My favorite line? “So you’re going to have to place — replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company. I call that the ‘Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere.’” Not that it was particularly apt, or fair, but I appreciate insubstantial rhetorical flair like this. I think I actually screamed out loud when he said it.
Most memorable moment? When Biden choked up talking about the accident that killed half his family and critically injured the other half. It was so utterly surprising, coming like that mid-sentence, that I almost couldn’t handle it. FOOM: 97% complete.
2. Palin was the Palin we met at the convention, which was comforting. Post-Couric, people have been labeling her anything from “incurious” to an outright idiot. Though the special tonight wasn’t Roasted Crow, I was pleased to see a solid performance and a relatively stimulating debate.
The pundits and spinsters are coming out saying that Palin didn’t say much of substance, avoided quite a few questions, and continued to rely too heavily on talking points, all criticisms with which I generally agree. After Biden’s pretty heavy narrative about his family, Palin visibly stalled and then in response fell back into her Maverick chorus. Granted, Biden’s emotional coup was a tough act to follow (let alone rebut), but Palin seemed so swept up in platitudes that she forgot to at least acknowledge a rare bit of humanity in the debate.
Palin didn’t change minds. But a lot of people who were falling into despair over the last few weeks – I include Dreher (and secretly Austin) in this number – can shake it off after her performance. It really was pretty solid.
3. I’m interested to see where fact-checking gets us in the next few days. A few times Biden quipped that McCain had voted just as Obama did in response to some of Palin’s jabs. I don’t think he was referring to identical votes on identical bills, and he did get one chance to clarify this point. It is true that McCain voted against a bill that included funds for troops, on the grounds that the bill also proposed a timetable for withdrawl. However, his shorthand could come off as disingenuous. Only time will tell.
4. The McCain ticket has to get more specific. When Biden challenged Palin to provide specific policy differences between their ticket and the Bush Administration, all we got were High School Election generalities (vending machines! w00t!). The charge can be uneven and it still stands; the Democrats are proposing all sorts of socialist mainstays that distinguish them dramatically from the current administration. The McCain ticket needs to work harder than that to divest themselves of their Bush-luggage. Mavericks demanding more oversight and greater sensitivity to Main Street? Not a lot of meat on those bones right yet.
5. Palin fared better on climate change this time around, but stuck with her old line, which is a bad one. She says she doesn’t want to argue about what causes global warming, she wants to focus on what we can do to improve things. It’s her way of dodging the presumed scientific consensus on the issue, but it’s got a big flaw and Biden walloped her for it. To understand how to fix climate change, we need to understand why it’s happening.
6. There were several figures used in the presidential debate – Iraq’s surplus, the amount America spends on foreign oil – that were exaggerated. They were used again. I didn’t notice any revisions by either ticket.
7. Biden sounded like a creepy heavy-breather a couple times and he exhaled heavily into the mic. It doesn’t come off very well.
8. Palin rightly referred to Obama’s tax plan as “redistribution of wealth.” This is exactly true, and Biden’s defense was a lame duck. Does redistribution of wealth scare me? It depends. Does it scare the American People? Ask McCarthy.
9. “We are not perfect as a nation, but together, we represent a perfect ideal, and that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights.” Remember the Titans, anybody? Anybody?
I say the win goes to Biden. That’s not a story, though. The real story is that Palin didn’t fail. There are still questions – big ones – left for the McCain campaign to answer. But Palin has done well enough for Republicans to take the question of her legitimacy off of that list.
Chris, you’re sounding more and more like Chuck Todd every day. I’m impressed.
I totally predicted this. You better recognize! Palin swept it.
Palin didn’t sweep anything.
Go back and read the transcript of the debate. Palin is often incoherent, repeatedly fails to answer questions, and resorts to the same handful of talking points through most of the debate.
Every major poll of undecided voters (even eventually Fox) has determined that Biden won the debate, usually by pretty significant margins.
Don’t forget that Biden had his kid gloves on, and Palin had to essentially exceed only the lowest of expectations. We were all hoping she could manage to string a sentence together; that she did, and she even managed occasionally to loosely connect some bullet points on her index cards with the debate topics. She performed at a level expected of most 7th grade debate students. Nothing more. Is that a sweep?
Give me one time she actually took a moderator question and answered it more satisfyingly than Biden. I can’t think of a single one. If Palin swept it, she should have done it 18 times. She didn’t win the debate. She survived it.
Palin’s only triumph is that she didn’t repeat the Couric debacle. Look at her two successes. Both were preceded by days of preparation, and in both, she was able to have notes. You’ll also notice that in both she spends 90% of her time parroting campaign lines fed to her by McCain’s campaign handlers. Outside of ANWAR, Palin hasn’t once demonstrated (to me, at least) that she has the intellectual independence or mettle to operate effectively on the unscripted, national stage. We “let Sarah be Sarah,” and apparently she’s the woefully inadequate and dishonest RNC platform with an up-do.
I don’t buy the small town values, Joe-Sixpack schtick. That type of reverse snobbery doesn’t translate well if an international crisis should visit itself upon America. “Doggone it, Iran, put away your nukes. Up in Alaska, we don’t call that gettin’ along.”
I am still utterly convinced that she is incapable, at this point at least, of governing the country effectively. Palin played to her strengths and did quite well, but I do not believe they are the strengths required to qualify for the second-highest office in the nation. She’s not supposed to play the part of good ol’ wholesome Sarah Plain and Tall. She’s the stand-in for the freaking POTUS, taking over the US in one of its greatest periods of unrest.
She may know what it’s like to sit at the kitchen table and fret over bills. But she has utterly no clue what the problem is or how to goad Washington into fixing it. Our elected officials should be our betters. It is a travesty to think that some folksy language, a 90-minute smile, and compulsive winking would win the debate in any way whatsoever.
Lord have mercy on us all.