The VP debate is in the books, and pundits are busily dissecting the performances of both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin and what they mean to their respective “principles,” to use Biden’s term.
Here are my quick takes on the night:
Everyone was waiting for a gaffe. Could Biden keep his mouth shut and avoid the pitfalls of perceived sexism or overaggression? The answer was yes. Biden was careful not to engage Palin directly, though she tried hard to draw him in. He chose to speak to the moderator, and a few times to the camera, but very, very infrequently did he speak to Palin herself. He was measured and even, his tone only giving way to anger once that I saw. For her part, could Palin make it through 90 minutes without any Couric interview-like comments? The answer was yes. She came out of the gate direct and strong, speaking directly to the camera about 3/4 of the time and to Biden most of the rest of the time. Palin did have some minor miscues: Two people texted me swearing that they heard Palin say, “O’Biden;” at one point, I understood her to say “for Ganistan,” or something to that effect; and she pronounces it “nucular.” The most major misstep she had was confusing the name of the general in command in Afghanistan; she called him “McClellan;” his name is “McKiernan.” But given that 99.999 percent of Americans don’t know the difference, that’s a negligible mistake.
I thought Palin held her own and was most impressive during the first 20 or 25 minutes of the debate, when discussion centered around domestic policy. She was clear and concise, and she was able to effectively contrast McCain’s platform with Obama’s. She got a couple of strong digs in and was able to score some points with voters—well, CNN’s “uncommitted Ohio voters,” anyway—in her answers early on. But when the subject matter turned to foreign policy, it was quite evident that she was out of her league. She made a valiant effort to keep pace with Biden—who, after all, was chosen for nothing else than his foreign policy expertise—and she was much improved from her interviews with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric. But if you are a 40-something governor with virtually no foreign policy experience, there is no matching wits with someone who has spent 36 years in the Senate and has made it his hallmark.
I have to give Gwen Ifill credit; for all the sound and fury about her new book about THE AGE OF OBAMA, she was even-handed and fair. There is no way to know, of course, whether she was more even-handed and fairer because of all the uproar about her book. But whatever the cause, Ifill was careful to not make herself the issue. One could even make the case that she trod especially lightly around Palin. There were several times when Ifill could have pressed her for an answer to a question when Palin answered a question that wasn’t asked, but Ifill never did so. In the end, Ifill was fair. But we can’t know whether she was always going to be fair. There’s always that question of whether it was a reaction to the book backlash. And she could have—and probably should have—pressed Palin for answers to her questions. For whatever reason, she chose not to do so, and the debate was weaker for it. And that goes back to what I was talking about the other day: If the book hadn’t become an issue, Ifill could have pressed without being accused of roughing up Palin. Given the circumstances, though, I thought Ifill did a relatively admirable job. It’s nice to see a moderator actually stay out of the fray and leave the candidates to make the news during the debate. (Right, George Stephanopoulous?)
If there was any question about the groundbreaking interest this vice presidential debate drew among the American public, consider this: Nearly two full hours after the debate concluded, fully 80 percent of Google’s Top 100 most-searched phrases were debate-related. Several of these searches were for vocabulary words (turpitude, No. 20; divestment, No. 35; consummate, No. 43; tumultuous, No. 84) or concepts ("exceptionalism," from Palin’s use of the phrase, “American exceptionalism,” checked in at No. 9). But the 61st-most searched term on Google tonight gives us by far the clearest picture of the interest in this election: “Am I registered to vote?”
There was a lot of talk post-debate about what the impact of this debate will be on the campaigns themselves. Republican pundits on CNN were generally of the mindset that Palin did her job, which was to reassure the conservative base that McCain hadn’t made a mistake in choosing her. Democratic pundits said that it was a sorry day, indeed, when the bar is so low that you are left to convince your own party that you’re a credible candidate. But whatever the impact, everyone generally agreed that by tomorrow, this debate will be basically forgotten (except by Tina Fey and the writers at “Saturday Night Live"), absorbed into the continuing drama on Capitol Hill about what will happen with the not-a-bailout bill.
Tomorrow, all eyes turn back to Washington and the House of Representatives to see whether Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team can hold together enough Democrats to pass the not-a-bailout bill. Conventional wisdom seems to be that they will.
What happens after that is anyone’s guess.
