10/02/2008 (9:44 am)
A Little Debate Prep
Let’s begin by acknowledging that I’m not expecting much. Joe Biden is a pompous idiot who repeatedly says the wrong thing. Sarah Palin has not thought much about national topics, and by all appearances does not know much about them. From an informational standpoint, tonight’s debate will be a waste of time, and it will probably be painful to watch. I almost wish the Phillies/Brewers matchup would still be running at that hour.
However, from an electoral standpoint, it’s pretty crucial. If Palin does not produce a performance that’s just about as engaging as her speech at the Republican convention, this debate is going to hurt the Republican ticket badly. She doesn’t have to be the policy wonk that she isn’t, she just has to be cogent and likable. I have my doubts that she can deliver.
Unfortunately, that’s not true for Biden. He’s already proved dozens of times that he can say the stupidest things and it won’t hurt him. This would not be true if the press treated Biden the way it treated, say, Dan Quayle, or even the way it treated George W. Bush. Hell, the British press observed that in England, Biden would not even have a career anymore after his hilariously inept plagiarism of Neil Kinnock’s speech.
It would be very difficult for a politician in this country to be taken seriously ever again, after such a humiliation; but Americans are a more forgiving people, and so Biden was able to entertain them once again during the current race for the White House. Thus last year he declared that his then rival, Barack Obama, was “not yet ready for the Presidency”, which was not a post suitable for “on-the-job training”, but graciously acknowledged: ” I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
And we’re supposed to be more sanguine about the prospect of this buffoon being a heartbeat away from the Presidency than we are about the woman who delivered the natural gas pipeline to Alaska after 30 years of other peoples’ failures. But, you know, she hasn’t thought very much about Supreme Court decisions or why the Palestinians electing Hamas to represent them might be a bad thing, so clearly the fact that she’s on the ticket makes it imperative to vote Democratic. I’ve been told this more than once already.
About the only thing he could do to hurt himself would be to act supercilious and arrogant toward Gov. Palin in clear view of the TV audience; it’s the measure of Biden’s character that there’s actually a pretty fair chance he’ll do the one thing that could hurt him, and blow this.
Giving us some unexpected entertainment and a possible source of respite for Gov. Palin, it turns out that moderator Gwen Ifill has a clear, financial conflict of interest that should be grounds for her to recuse herself from moderating the debate. She’s written a book slated for release the day after Inauguration Day, entitled “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” That her book sales will be better if Obama wins is beyond dispute. That’s a matter of journalistic ethics which she has failed so far, but even aside from the book deal, the notion that Ifill is anything remotely resembling objective is too silly for words. I want anybody who thinks Ifill is a professional who will rise to the occasion and perform objectively to view the video below and explain the look of utter contempt on her face, or her dismay about how Palin “mocked” and “belittled” Obama, as she reports on Palin’s speech at the Republican convention:
But, of course, Brit Hume was too biased to host a debate.
Jim Treacher has a pretty funny list of proposed questions for the debate, with Ifill’s conflict of interest in mind. She’ll moderate the debate, of course — Democrats genuinely believe they’re above bias, and they have no shame about violating ethical rules because they’re the Good Guys, after all, and the rules aren’t really for them — but if enough of the public gets wind of the conflict it may affect their view of the debate. Stay tuned. McCain himself has already mouthed the obligatory “I’m sure she’s objective” mantra, but it’s not clear how widely the news will spread today.
I’m pretty disappointed at this point with McCain’s choice for VP. I thought her speech at the convention was terrific, but since then she’s proved inept at handling the press. (Of course, nobody’s mentioning the fact that Obama, himself, avoided press questions for the first 9 months of his primary campaign; he wasn’t so good with them at first, either.) I was opposed to either Palin or Bobby Jindal as VP because of their lack of seasoning, but I think it’s fair to say that Bobby Jindal would not be drawing blanks in front of Katie Couric over with which Supreme Court decisions he disagrees. McCain could have done better.
Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for the link to the Ifill video.
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1 Comment »
Comment by RM
Quick reaction. I thought Palin acquited herself well. She did not try to portray herself as a policy wonk, but instead played to her strength of communicating with Main Street America in a down to earth way.
Biden did not make any mistakes in terms of coming across as arrogant or condescending. I thought he managed to seem reasonable, calm and generally likeable.
Was yelling at the TV a few times such as when Biden claimed Obama foresaw the FNMA problem and urged caution, and spun McCain’s support of the surge and his own flip flops on Iraq. But these will never see the light of day. He didn’t make any “slight Indian accent” gaffes, and that is all that counts, sadly.
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