I always wondered what a wolverine would sound like chewing through plywood. Now I know: like Sarah Palin “debating” Joe Biden.
First, let me say that I was wrong--ridiculously wrong--when I said on “Hardball” before the debate here in St. Louis that the event would be the longest 90 minutes of Palin’s life. No way. She loved every minute. And when Biden said at the end that he was glad to have finally met her, he was clearly lying. It was no fun for him.
Palin grew up a hunter in Alaska. She and her family often ate what they had just shot, so she learned to stalk and bag her prey. Here at Washington University she was stalking a pinstriped senator.
When David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, came into the spin room after the debate he didn’t bother arguing that Palin was not ready for prime time. Instead he argued that she had not successfully distanced the GOP ticket from President George Bush.
If McCain was to be judged on the wisdom of his veep pick, she did him some good Thursday night by not appearing like a deer in the headlights.
Using attack lines she had carefully rehearsed, drawing on a decade of conservative sound bites and dismissive rhetoric, Palin dashed through 90 minutes without having to expose her lack of detained knowledge, blasting away at Biden. Moderator Gwen Ifill rarely followed up, and the format--a strict two minutes for answers--insured that the pace was what Governor Palin wanted: frantic.
But does any of this mean that Palin “won” the night, in the sense that it advanced the cause of her Republican ticket? I don’t think so. And that is because debates (and these are not really debates) have to be viewed in a wider context--and the context right now is who can show:
- that they are convincing agents of change.
- that they care deeply about the middle class.
- that they have nothing to do with the Bush administration.
I’m not sure Palin helped the GOP cause on any of those three points. Biden, keeping his cool, repeatedly pounded away on all three messages. Time after time he tied Palin and John McCain to unpopular economic and military policies of the Bush White House.
Palin did not defend, or even attempt to defend, McCain’s plan to begin taxing health-care benefits--a plan that most experts agree would end up costing families thousands of dollars a year. Nor did she defend in any detail McCain’s proposal to cut $400 billion in corporate taxes over the next decade (a plan that Biden brought up repeatedly).
“She just gave a folksy version of more of the same,” Axelrod said in the spin room.
Palin played fast and loose with the facts, getting the name of a general wrong and accusing Barack Obama of voting to raise taxes on lower-income families. She also didn’t bother answering Ifill’s questions but rather focused on delivering her sound bites.
As aggressive as her performance was, it is unlikely that it moved the overall horserace numbers. But she did show that she not only knows how to field dress a moose, but to stand toe to toe with a senator.
