About Last Night...

What a topsy-turvy political season we’re living through when the most hotly anticipated vice-presidential debate in this country’s history was also the one in which the leading lady went in beneath a cloud of the lowest expectations of her career.

Things haven’t been going so well for McCain/Palin. The American people are moving toward the Democrats in these uncertain economic times. Three weeks ago Sen. McCain was a force to be reckoned with. Now, his prowess is wilting. Yesterday, McCain pulled out of Michigan entirely, conceding he could not win there. Florida GOP leaders called for closed door emergency meetings as Obama’s numbers continue to swell in the Sunshine State. Up nearly 10 points in a nation-wide AP poll, Obama is starting to pull ahead in many polls covering the toss-up states, including Colorado and Virginia. Pennsylvania, once disputed, is now solidly for Obama.

For her part, Gov. Palin has become a satirical punching bag — on the right and the left. Her honeymoon, so lustrous just a month ago, has officially ended. After a series of disastrous interviews with CBS’ Katie Couric, even prominent conservatives have admitted she is out of her league and should step aside. Gov. Palin is on the verge of becoming a liability to her campaign.

So last night was Palin’s time to shine…or implode. Did you hear that giant collective sigh of relief at about 10:30? That was the entire Republican Party exhaling a breath they’d been holding for a solid hour and a half.

She’d done it.

Sort of.

To prove her fitness at last night’s debate, Gov. Palin needed to do little more than not trip on her way out to the lectern. But let’s give credit where credit is due. Palin did more than survive Sen. Biden last night, she held her own. From the start she was folksy and direct, looking into the camera (and even winking at it—tell me one male politician that could have gotten away with that) even more than Obama did last week. Her smile, admittedly grating after an hour and a half, never left her face. She was enthusiastic and funny. She spoke of soccer games, decried the media and those who call the East Coast home, uttered “doggone it” and invoked Joe Sixpack. She championed her distance from Washington, saying that she’s been at this national political stuff for only five weeks. (Yes, Ms. Palin, that much is obvious.) She spoke often and glowingly of the middle class, something her boss completely ignored in his debate. She jabbed cloyingly with “say it ain’t so Joe,” a line she’d obviously been waiting to spring on Biden all night. And she used the word “maverick” like it was some sort of magic talisman.

If the Sarah Palin we saw last night was the Sarah Palin we’ve been seeing in what few media interviews she’s afforded us, then her reputation right now would be quite different. But personality and performance is not the same thing as comprehension and innate understanding.

“I may not answer the questions the way either you or the moderator want to hear. I’m going to speak straight to the American people,” she said early on and we all know why.

What Sarah Palin did last night was little different than what she did the night we first met her in front of a battery of teleprompters. Last night’s debate was the next best thing to standing in front of a script — memorize your talking pints, ignore the questions, recite whatever you want. If Palin floundered in her answers to Katie Couric last week, she simply ignored them altogether last night. And she did so with panache. She sounded as if she were reading off of cue cards for much of the debate. That wasn’t independent, free thought, it was recitation. Palin never moved beyond her talking points in the entire 90 minutes. She repeated campaign clichés and the same well-worn attack lines over and over again.

For his part, Sen. Biden, while certainly not hitting it out of the park, did manage to do exactly what he came there to do. But then, given his experience and skill, his expectations weren’t remotely as low as Palin’s. Instead of long-winded answers — a trait he shares with Obama — he replied in short, lucid, factual sentences. He never condescended to his opponent, was never disdainful to her, nor attacked her in such a way that would have been perceived as bullying. And best of all, for all those worrying about Biden’s propensity to stick his foot in his mouth, the senator from Delaware was entirely gaffe free.

Sen. Biden did a nice job challenging Palin for her claims to the heartland. “The notion that somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone…” he said, tears appearing when discussing the death of his wife and daughter.

Sen. Biden showed a clear grasp of the big picture and of the details that made up that big picture. He out-performed Ms. Palin on almost every issue, especially foreign policy and national security. When the debate moved beyond domestic energy issues, the governor’s forte, Palin was lost, her lack of national and international experience all too evident.

On Israel, Palin could offer little more than the importance for a two-state solution (at Ifill's suggestion) and the importance of building our embassy in Jerusalem.

On nuclear deterrence, the most she could muster is that nuclear bombs were bad and needed to stay out of the hands of bad guys.

Asked what her and John McCain’s exit strategy is in Iraq, she replied with “the surge.” The surge? Now who can’t tell the difference between strategy and tactics?

When Palin tried to come back at Biden for pointing out that the American commander in Afghanistan disagreed with McCain’s call for an Iraq-style surge, she mistakenly referred to a Civil War general, not the current military leader in Afghanistan.

Domestically, she parroted the usual lines about tax cuts, while offering little whatsoever of substance to the crisis facing our economy. She continued to peddle the ridiculous spin about the American worker being the fundamental McCain continues to invoke when discussing the economy. She said a McCain/Palin Administration would demand rigorous oversight, and in the next breath said government should get out of business’ way.

Palin got points on healthcare. She may not have offered anything of value herself, but she did a great job questioning Biden’s plans by asking if Americans really wanted the same government that is currently stumbling drunkenly over saving Wall Street to run their healthcare system.

Palin, who has backed off her skepticism about human involvement in global warming since joining McCain, gave Biden one of his most powerful moments of the evening when she said she didn’t want to argue about the causes of global warming, just the solutions. Stating that Palin’s answer marked the biggest distinction between the two tickets, Biden shot back, “If you don’t understand what the cause is, then it’s difficult to come up with the solution.” Indeed. You can’t learn from the past when you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong or are in any way responsible. Biden rightly realizes that Palin’s distorted worldview toward responsibility goes far beyond global warming.

Curiously, Palin played off her comment several days ago about having watched Biden give speeches while she was in grade school, by pushing that the last thing America wants or needs is yet another Washington insider. It’s a curious claim coming from the running mate of a man who has served in Congress for nearly 30 years.

As the debate went on, Biden got more specific and Palin more abstract. Last night, he, and not Palin, was the straight talker. Biden knew his facts. He answered direct questions directly. Palin did not. And yet she more than held her own. Why? In avoiding the train wreck everyone expected, Palin came out of last night’s debate looking far stronger than when she went in. It’s all an optical illusion, of course, but it’s a damn good one.

Luckily for Sarah Palin, last night was not a letter graded test, but rather a pass/fail. By anyone’s estimation, she passed, but while she succeeded in doing her cause no harm, she probably didn’t help it much either. I doubt that last night will make much of a dent in the polls for either candidate.

UPDATE: Here's SNL's interpretation of the debate.