Dammit. She pulled it off. Granted, the bar was low. Sure, a lot of what she said was party line rhetoric, but she weaved it into coherent sentences. She often took the conversation off topic and didn’t address the question directly, or at all. She largely did it to get to some other point she wanted to make, but I found it disconcerting, and maybe rude. She also sprinkled the speech with lots of folksy bits. All these were expected based on her previous debates from Alaska. She wasn’t quite as aggressive as I expected. I thought she came across as personable, but may have overplayed that at points. The winking and shout outs were certainly over the top and came across as too familiar and affected to me.
On Biden’s side, I thought he stayed more on topic and had more specific responses that reflected his depth of expertise on the topics. He spoke well, and came across as confident and capable. Biden’s biggest problem was that he was expected to perform at this level. I thought he did great, but I thought he would.
Judging the debate on absolutes, ignoring expectations coming in, I thought Biden won, but not by any enormous margin. However, in terms of who performed farther above the bar of expectations, she was clearly higher.
One point of enormous concern was her take on the power of the office she aspires to. She seems to feel the Constitution gives the VP broader power in the Senate than what’s defined. She also seems to be taking Cheney as a role model for how a VP should perform. That should scare the hell out of all of us. She also rather ducked the question on whether or not she would follow McCain’s policies should she assume the office. She danced a bit, but I was left with the impression that she wouldn’t feel obligated to complete McCain’s term as much as usher in the Palin term. Given that there is an actuarial 1 in 6 chance she’ll get to do that (given McCain’s age and health), that’s certainly reason to vet Palin’s positions independnet of McCain–not that we’ll get a chance to do that.
I think Palin’s supporters will be thrilled with Palin’s performance. I think McCain supporters who were concerned about her will be relieved. I think Obama supporters will be nonplussed. If anything they’ll be annoyed she didn’t crash and burn. As for the independent/undecided voters (the only ones who really matter here), I suspect this will be deemed a wash and the focus can go back where it belongs–on the presidential candidates.
One final note… the word is nuclear, it is not nuc-u-lar. I simply cannot abide another executive with the launch codes to a weapon who’s name they can’t pronounce. If you can’t say it, you shouldn’t be allowed to fire it.