In the next few days, there's going to be an awful lot of wrangling over what the expectations ought to be for Sarah Palin in Thursday's vice presidential debate.
The way pundits look at these things, the lower the expectations are for Palin, the better it is for McCain -- because low expectations are easier to meet. Conversely, the higher the expectations are for Palin's performance, the better it is for Obama.
Palin is winning this expectations game rather handily, doing herself wonders over the past few days, not just with her disastrous CBS interview, but also her suggestion (since walked back by McCain) that she agrees with Barack Obama on Pakistan. And it can't hurt to have conservatives piling on either.
In normal circumstances, winning the expectations game this thoroughly might be a good thing for the McCain campaign, but the problem they face is that at the same time that Palin's expectations are plummeting, the need for her to have an especially strong performance is growing.
As you can see in the Kos/R2000 tracking poll, Palin's net favorability ratings have dropped by 25 points over the last two weeks. This is a huge shift in public opinion and it means that for Sarah Palin on Thursday night, "good enough" just won't do.
The issue isn't so much what the expectations are for Palin's performance, but rather the fact that for her debate to have an impact on the campaign, she must deliver a game-changer for the McCain campaign -- and it has to be a positive one.
Make no mistake, a game-changer is exectly what McCain-land needs; after all, the only thing more distressing to them than Palin's dropping numbers is John McCain nosedive in the polls relative to Barack Obama.
Making things worse, all this is happening as time is running out. No matter how many times McCain may try to suspend his campaign, the election is on November 4, and nothing can change that reality.
Think about the fact that when Joe Biden and Sarah Palin take the stage, there will be just 33 days left until the election. That's not a lot of time, and unless Palin is able to turn the election around -- which no vice presidential candidate has ever done in the history of presidential politics -- her debate performance will at best be a non-issue.
Basically, she needs to be superhuman: to not only to turn her negative ratings around, but also to somehow make the case for John McCain in a way that he has not yet been able to do for himself. This is a task that even the greatest politician in history would probably not be able to achieve, and whether or not you think Palin is a decent debater (in my view, given the tightly structured format, she'll probably be fine), she's not the greatest politician ever.
If I were Joe Biden in this debate, I'd hardly engage with Sarah Palin at all, not because of any concern about being labeled a sexist, but rather because there's no percentage in battling with her. He's already winning. Why get in a fight?
At the same time, he can't be arrogant and dismissive like McCain was. He needs to look Palin in the eye like any normal human being would do in a debate.
But he can also borrow a line from Barack Obama and point out that this campaign isn't about the personal fortunes of the candidates, this campaign is about the people they are running to represent. He can use that to explain why he isn't directly engaging Sarah Palin, why he's keeping the focus on John McCain, because at the end of the day, this contest is about Barack Obama vs. John McCain -- and that's a contest he is winning.
That's a contest we all are winning.