Vice Presidential Smackdown: Vice Harder

Some quick thoughts on the Vice Presidential debate that just finished. I personally was bothered by Sarah Palin, but I don't think a lot of Americans will be. This is where I have a fundamental difference with a lot of my countrymen and women. I don't think it's too much to ask the Vice President to put gs on the end of words when they go there, or to use words the way they were actually meant to be used. And yet afterwards on CNN the commentators, on either side, universally praised how "folksy" Palin was. Just because people seem to like it doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Is she going to be in the room with Putin, as the current cliche goes, saying "I'm hopin' and wishin' we can find some positive impacts for our folks back home"?

Okay, rant over. I'm going to try not to do that too often. In terms of actual analysis, I think that Biden did a fairly good job of calling Palin on any outright lies she made without seeming petty (he didn't call her on calling Gen. McKiernan "General McClellan," for example). Palin tried her darndest to do the same, but I don't think she made many of her points with the same specificity. She also said a few things that may come back to bite her. She said she agreed with Vice President Cheney on the subject of expanding the powers of the Vice Presidency. She said she is not convinced humans are responsible for global warming. These are positions that I'm not sure are in tune with what people are looking for.

I think it was a decent strategy on Palin's part to try to link Obama and Biden to "looking backward" when Biden tried to link McCain to the failed policies of the Bush administration. It worked rhetorically to shape the debate the way she wanted it. Biden, however, did not let that effect his own strategy, which was to do just that. In my opinion, "looking backward" or not, every time McCain/Palin talks about changing something from the status quo, Obama/Biden should come back with "Republicans have had the Presidency 20 of the last 28 years. Republicans have controlled the Congress 10 of the last 12 years. Why hasn't any of this happened before now?"

It was sometimes frustrating how much Biden insisted on sticking to the "3rd Bush term" idea, at the expense of offering more coherent versions of his own ideas. It may come off as overly negative. However, I don't think that will be an issue in the long run in a campaign where Democrats seem to often say good things about John McCain but Republicans resolutely refuse to say anything positive about Barack Obama. The "attack dog" role is a traditional one for a Vice President candidate, so the Presidential candidate doesn't have to get their hands dirty.

The usual question after these things is "well, who won?" That is of course completely subjective. I think Gov. Palin gave Sen. Biden the openings he needed to really ram home any advantage he may have had, and I'm not sure he followed through on those. I think he may have performed better overall, but I recognize that many reasonable people may disagree. Many people thought Palin's performance here would hurt the McCain campaign, and I don't think it really did. However, McCain's been steadily losing ground lately in several key states, and I doubt Palin did anything here that would change that.

In other news... wow, the Cubs are in trouble. You'd think I would have seen that coming, but I definitely didn't.