Welcome to Sarahland. It's a magical place, where the sun always shines, everything is just perfect and where reality is simply an optional mode of existence.
We all got a little tour tonight through Sarahland, as Alaska's Republican governor Sarah Palin, who successfully buried a bipartisan investigation of her actions firing the state's top cop, pledged to the altar of bipartisanship.
In Sarahland, answering questions asked to you is optional. You say what you want to say, regardless of what that old-school questioner has to offer. Want to talk about education, or taxes? Go right ahead. It doesn't matter what the question is. She cheerfully admitted she won't answer the question the moderator, Gwen Ifill, wants to ask or even stick to the topics Ifill wants the candidates to discuss.
Have a few talking points you want repeat endlessly, regardless of whether they are true? Go right ahead. Talk about Barack Obama's not funding the troops. Talk about Barack Obama's raising taxes. Talk about the importance of drilling (Drill, Baby, Drill.) Why should facts be able to intrude on one's permanent sunny disposition? What does it matter if John McCain also voted against funding the troops if you can wink at the camera and sound like down-home gotcha Alaska? What does it matter if you continually mis-state Obama's tax play if you can recite homilies about the greatness of America without getting down to specifics and wave the bloody image of the "white flag of surrender"? What does it matter if John McCain opposed alternative fuels? One just plows ahead on perkiness.
In Sarahland, one gets props for pronouncing correctly the names of foreign leaders, even if they are not the right leaders to be discussing. In Sarahland, one can interpret the Constitution as one wishes, regardless of whether that interpretation has any merit. In Sarahland, inconvenient truths like taxing of health benefits can simply be wished away.
In Sarahland, every question is an opportunity for the pageant contestant to look perky, to take her best shot and to exude confidence - even if nothing the contestant says has anything to do with the discussion at hand. In Sarahland, winks and nods and aphorisms are enough to carry a spunky person through the worst of times - like an hour and a half of being schooled by someone older, smarter and more polished and more informed.
Sarahland occasionally welcomes visitors to its borders. Pat Buchanan must have had his passport stamped, because he came out and said flatly that Palin won the debate. Sarahland bears an important similarity to another cult in this country, although in its cultishness only, not in the merits. Ask anyone who has a piece of fruit stamped on a computer, and you will have someone who will readily acknowledge the existence of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. At least those people have the judgment to recognize the existence of that field. In Sarahland, there is no such measure of being self aware.
The good thing about Sarahland is that any rules can apply that one wants to apply. Sarah Palin clearly won the debate. She stuck to her talking points, she made eye contact with the audience. She didn't look panicked, at least not too often. She used her pageant and TV training to bluff and blunder her way through answers.
For those of us who haven't had our passport stamped, however, the evening turned out very differently. We saw the difference between a pro and am amateur. That might have been Joe Biden's best night ever. He matched Palin emotion for emotion, Main Street for Main Street. And he trumped her everywhere else -- on experience, on facts, on analysis of domestic and foreign situations.
Biden in fact could have taken Palin out at any number of occasions during the debate. He didn't smack her "management" experience with the said note that she left her town $20 million in debt. He didn't note the earmarks she requested contributed to that spending she abhors. He didn't note that the pipeline she supports goes through Canada. He stayed on message, hitting on John McCain's record. He did make her look absolutely lost when Palin tried to give her version of the Reagan, "there you go again" line by scolding Biden on looking too much to the past, and not to the future to find solutions to problems. Biden, correctly, replied that to find the solutions to global warming, you have to look at the causes. He said that the policies of John McCain wouldn't differ from those of George Bush. One has to know the past to deal with the future. It's a wise view of the world, one not familiar in Sarahland.
Look at the split screen when Biden delivered his closing statement. For a moment or two, he broke through the reality distortion field and Palin saw what she was competing against -- someone who was better than she is in every way. It was but a glimmer, then it was back to Sarahland, where everything is peachy keen, you betcha.