Palin, Biden Palin' By Comparison

I finally got around to becoming one of the many millions of Americans who watched Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in Thursday’s vice presidential debate. Hey, give me a break -- when my Cubs are in the playoffs, a lot of things get TiVo'd, because you don't always know how long that's going to last.

At any rate, it's no secret that this debate wasn't really Palin vs. Biden; it was Palin vs. Palin. All of America was waiting -- Democrats on the edge of their seats; Republicans with splayed fingers at the ready to close over their eyes -- for Palin to trip and fall and not be able to get up.

But it didn't happen. Her delivery was a bit mechanical and she clearly stuck to what she had rehearsed, but she certainly didn't embarrass herself or her ticket.

For that matter, neither candidate was exacty hitting home runs out there. I felt that neither of these two performed as well as either of the candidates at the top of the ticket in the Sept. 26 debate -- in other words, Obama and McCain were both more appealing than Palin or Biden.

I did think Palin showed a lot of guts to stare straight into the camera and speak to all of America with conviction on the heels of the beating she’s taken in the press. It’s clear now that she’s just an average, ordinary middle-class American, who, like every average, ordinary middle-class American, has an oversimplified view of what it would take to run the country. She’s just had the misfortune to be the one of us who’s been called out on it.

My only criticism of Palin's performance (or, I should say, my only legitimate criticism of Palin's performance) is that she sidestepped several of Gwen Ifill's questions. And she should be graded down for that. But no more so than any other politician who sidesteps questions, and there are a lot of those. (For the record, my other, bigger criticism is that she consistently said "nucular" instead of "nuclear", which just grated at the inside of my brain every time it clamored out of her mouth.)

Biden, incidentally, did not look for opportunities to trip her up, as some Democratic voters were hoping to see him do. Just a gut feeling, but I'm guessing this restraint was by design. There is a risk that Biden would turn some people off by attacking Palin. Barack Obama, who does not make dumb strategic decisions, has grinded out a modest but reliable lead in the polls, and I would not be surprised if he put a muzzle on Biden to "push" the debate and not risk those gains.

In fact, the closest Biden came to attacking Palin was when he completely schooled her on the constitutional role of the vice president. (And that's not my opinion; you can look it up here.) His second biggest attack was not directly at Palin but more at McCain, when he complained that we have heard Palin talking about how much of a maverick McCain will be as president but have heard nothing about how he will be a maverick.

This charge carried a lot of weight from Biden because he did offer a lot of specifics in his answers, and for that I would say he scored a narrow win in the debate. Then again, I'm biased. If someone wants to tell me this was a tie, I won't argue. If you tell me a tie is as good as a win for Palin, though, I would disagree. When you're behind in sports, you can't trade score for score, and likewise the McCain-Palin ticket can’t afford to just hold their ground this late in the game.