In about an hour, the one and only vice presidential debate of this election will take place at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Sarah Palin and Joe Biden will go at it for 90 minutes under a highly structured and restrictive set of debate rules. It should be interesting to say the least.
I will try to live blog it as much as possible below.
For fun and enjoyment, while you are waiting for the debate, you might want to try out the Governor Sarah Palin Foreign Policy Answer Hotline – a live interactive chat session with America’s favorite pitbull/hockey mom.
Postscript
Joe Biden won the debate handily. Not surprisingly, Sarah Palin did not fall on her face. She used two tactics to avoid total collapse. These two tactics will do lasting damage to her and the McCain/Palin ticket. First, she refused to answer any of the moderator’s questions. At one point in the debate, she explicitly said she would not answer the questions posed her. Second, she fell back on talking points over and over again. The talking points served her well in the first part of the debate. But about 30 minutes in, the talking points became too repititious. The lack of substance behind her talking points became very apparent.
Her refusal to answer questions will probably not sit well with the undecideds that had tuned in to watch the debate. These undecideds were probably looking for substantive answers to the important issues in this election. Instead, they got stump speech talking points from a coached candidate. Those who would be impressed by her stump speech already belong to her base. The rest of the electorate is probably looking for more than repititous talking points. They will leave the debate unimpressed by her.
On the rare occasions where Palin made assertions beyond her talking points, her responses were demonstably false. At one point, she challenged fact checkers to follow up on what was said in the debate. She will regret that. Furthermore, Palin failed to defend any of the attacks Joe Biden made on John McCain’s record. Either she was unwilling or she was simply incapable. It is most likely the latter.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, showed his mastery of the subject matter. He looked serious and had gravitas. He completed his assigned task with precision. He destroyed John McCain’s reocrd with clear statements and handy facts about McCain’s record. He pushed the policy positions of the person at the top of his ticket. Whereas Palin got weaker as the debate went on, Biden became stronger – his atttacks became sharper and more focused and he started to connect with the audience. With Biden and Palin side by side on the stage, the contrast could not have been clearer. There was only one person on the stage who looked and sounded ready to be vice president. It was not Sarah Palin.
There were two moments in the debate that will resonate. The first was when Joe Biden talked about his wife and daughter’s death and of nearly losing his sons in a car accident. With that, Joe Biden connected with the audience. He came into our living rooms and came into our kitchens. He connected in a way politicians rarely can. He opened up to the American public and we understood. It was a genuine moment that cut through the plastic persona of "hockey mom" that the Republicans have been trying to shape in their desperate play for the female vote. In one moment, Joe Biden separated the genuine from the myth. The debate was won.
The second moment was more ominious. Toward the end of the debate Sarah Palin asserted that she was for expanded powers for the office of the vice president. She openly tied herself to Dick Cheney. With that, she tied the McCain/Palin ticket to all the abuses of power, led by Dick Cheney, of the Bush Administration. The one connection John McCain has been avoiding like the plague, Sarah Palin in one moment of stupidity sealed with a flourish. It was a moment of arrogance and hubris. And Sarah Palin owned it tonight. Republicans can no longer run away from the Bush/Cheney administration. Sarah Palin made sure of it.
Sarah Palin’s performance tonight may have caused some Republicans to come out of the fetal positions they had retreated to. But, she hurt her ticket with the voters that will matter in this election – the undecideds in the middle. She came accross as both extreme and hollow. She is George W Bush and Dick Cheney in one package. That is a losing image for the McCain/Palin ticket.
9:10PM Palin says "fundamentals of the economy" are the American worker. She says she and McCain are a "team of mavericks".
9:17PM Biden says McCain supports deregulation. Palin, given a chance to answer, wants to talk about Obama "raising taxes". She is given a second opportunity by Ifill to answer and declines saying she wont answer the way moderators and Washington insiders want. Instead says that she cut taxes as governor and mayor. Palin calls giving the middle class a tax break "redistribution of wealth.
9:21PM Wow! Palin brings up $5000 credit for healthcare that McCain wants to give. Biden pounces and says McCain will tax everyone’s healthcare, meaning 20 million people will lose their health insurance.
9:31PM Palin says that John McCain will keep every promise he made in the campaign, even though the Wall Street bailout package is taking out $700 billion bite out of the federal coffers. She accuses Obama of supporting tax cuts for oil companies. Biden says Obama voted against them and McCain voted for them, and McCain wants to give $4 billion more tax cuts to Exxon Mobil.
9:35PM Wheels are starting to come off Palin when trying to defend McCain’s support of the bankruptcy bill. She falls back heavily on blizzard of talking points to talk about the bailout.
9:40PM I was waiting for this. Palin says "hungry markets". Got to love it.
9:44PM Palin wont say global warming is man-made. Says cause doesnt matter. And then goes into standard talking point about an "all of the above" energy policy. Sadly, she did not say "fungible" or "hungry markets" this time. Biden says you cant fix the problem if you dont know the cause. The cause is man-made, he says.
9:47PM Ding Ding. Palin says "hungry markets" again. And of course "all of the above" approach.
9:55PM We are now talking about Iraq. Palin says Obama is showing the "white flag of surrender". Biden is pissed. He is off on a "John was wrong" riff. Got to love it.
10:00PM Good god! Palin is now quoting al Qaeda leaders to determine US foreign policy. She insists Iraq is the central front on terror. This after Biden says bin Laden lives in Pakistan.
10:05PM Joke of the day: Palin calls Obama "naive". I almost fell of my seat. Biden points out McCain wont even meet with NATO ally Spain.
10:10PM This has now turned into farce. Palin does not want us to look at Bush failures but will not say how McCain’s foreign policy will be different.
10:15PM Biden says he has no stomach for genocide in Darfur.
10:17PM I can’t bear this any longer. Please let it end.
10:20PM Palin: "Team of mavericks" in response to what would happen if McCain died in office. Please let it end!
10:26PM "Doggone it" says Palin. This is turning into a PTA meeting, or, at least she thinks so.
10:28PM Ask Sarah Palin what the vice president does. I think she said the constitution under a McCain administration would give Palin more powers.
10:30PM Palin says she agrees with Cheney that vice president’s office is a fourth branch of government. What a money quote. Biden says "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history."
10:35PM Palin says "America is a nation of exceptionalism."
10:37PM Joe Biden just won the debate by talking about his sons in the hospital and being a single dad. Nothing else matters. "Mavericks, mavericks, mavericks, blah blah blah".
10:40PM Biden just destroyed McCain’s "maverick" label. He rattled off a bunch of legislation that McCain was against that would have helped the American middle class. He said McCain is no maverick on the issues that matter to the American people. On those issues McCain has supported Bush.
