McCain Lost the VP Debate Too

Sarah Palin has experience being a runner-up -- which will come in handy in November. Tonight she barely kept up. In advance, the commenteriat almost unanimously agreed on a false measure of this debate. Judging by "expectation" meant that pundits could conceivably award a faux victory if she was half-coherent and modestly informed after a cram session in Arizona. But voters apply an absolute standard, not a low water mark of expectations: With America facing two wars and economic disaster, Americans ask if a candidate is up to the job.

By any rational assessment, Palin wasn't tonight -- and hasn't been any time she's not reading a teleprompter. President Palin-- the nuclear button, recession, the health care crisis, global warming (which she doesn't believe in, as she believes in creationism) -- well, it simply doesn't compute. A part in Fargo, yes -- that office in the West Wing, no.

Everybody wondered how Palin would do. At least as important, or more, was that Joe Biden did a superb job. He deftly stopped Palin from distorting Obama's views. He won the tax cut argument-- Democrats usually don't. He won the health care argument; Palin just gave up. She wouldn't -- couldn't -- answer the questions; she wanted to talk about energy, which she's supposed to know something about, but she even lost on that . Often she didn't know or couldn't say what McCain's policy is. And on foreign policy, she must have been staring out the window when she sat down with Henry Kissinger. She "loves" Israel but can't discuss mideast realities in one inch depth. She can't even articulate basic conditions for the use of nuclear weapons.

Palin relied on topline phrases and had little command of facts. Why, she even memorized the name of the President of Iran. But it was mostly blah, blah, blah. At the end, the Obama-Biden ticket is far ahead on the big issues -- and Palin's a parrot repeating memorized phrases, not a plausible vice-president. Biden called her on it every time.

The last two Democratic VP nominees fell short in their debates; Lieberman was routed and never even fought back. Biden did the job for Democrats while Palin sounded like Kozinski's Chance the Gardener mouthing empty phrases. In successive sentences she said "there you go again" and "doggone." She talked about ordinary people; Biden eloquently showed he actually cares about the middle class. She was essentially phony and tin-eared after Biden spoke emotionally about his family -- and about raising his sons as a single father after their mother was killed and they almost died in an auto accident -- she spouted pol-talk cliches. He has a real emotional IQ; she sounds like an Ozzie and Harriett script (a reference which shows my age -- and a phony folksiness that reveals her inauthentic authenticity).

Today McCain pulled out of Michigan; the economic news worsened. The electoral map is smaller; the economy is smaller; and the odds on McCain are longer and longer. The press probably will give Palin credit for not falling down on stage. She couldn't deal with many of the questions directly or most of the facts, so she bloviated according to plan. She winked at us; the voters won't wink back at her. Pat Buchanan thinks she won. I think people still have a bullshit factor-- and that means she survived even as she met the low expectations she's created. McCain gained nothing; he was the loser -- in the first presidential debate, and the vice-presidential one.

Read more reactions to the Biden-Palin Vice Presidential debate from HuffPost bloggers

Comments

[barbierb]

I prefer a folksy Palin to an Obama who voted a million for a museum for woodstock and the money could have gone to health care for children and pregnant mothers. If you want the same o same o
dont check up on obamas and bidens voting records and McCains. Obama and Mccain are both
giving half truths. Mccain health care plan would pay up to 5,000 for your insurance company. To
the Company and nothing is said about charging taxes on it. I have been doing my homework and
now I will watch the 2 debates left and then I will decide who I will vote for. Do I think Palin could run this country. Probably she could after all since congress and the senate have overide abilities I am sure she couldn't screw up anymore then our Senate and Congress have been doing for years. Iur
Forefathers were very intelligent and they put a lot of interesting things in the constitution to make sure
that our country isn't in the hands of just one person. Maybe we should also check out our congressmen and senators to see how they are voting on bills also. Then you too could make an educated quess on how to vote. But of course if you vote because this is the way my family has voted
for years. You just don't care but at least you vote.

[Promise]

The one happy thought I have about this is that the Joe Sixpack group whom Palin is obviously courting will be so hung over and stupid on election day that they won't get to the polls. They might not know it's election day, they might not be able to find the polls and the directions on the voting machines might be too hard for them. Yea, let's hear it for stupidity. Do they even have polling places in Dogpatch?

[justoverit333]

LOL!!! You are so right. and she said "nucular"
like Mr. Bush, not nuclear.

[barkanomics]

Sarah Palin is a detestable example of American womanhood. This is what the feminist revolution produced? Arrogant, maniacally ambitious females with hearts of ice? When she was asked to be vp she "didn't blink." No hesitation. No questioning of her own abilities and experience. Zero. Put her unwed pregnant teenage daughter on a stage, hand her special needs infant to that same daughter, and leave the family heavy lifting to her husband. Did she ask her husband? Did he have any say at all? I consider myself a supporter of women's rights. But I'm also a supporter of human rights.

[SantaFeStars]

Palin doesn't even know the meaning of achilles heel! When Ifles asked both candidates what their achilles heel had been in the past, Palin enthusiastically sounded off on her many accomplishments. Now, that's a gaffe that most people missed.

[bodo]

When Palin and McCain talk about "country" they are, like, referring to putting on her fake country folk accent, like how she is goin' to be "shakin' and fixin' the economy" (yep, this is an actual quote, folks).

[pons1595]

[Sarah Palin] asked her town librarian if the library "could live with censorship of library books.” (Note that factcheck.org disputes that the librarian was fired. Wait...fac­t-checking factcheck, now it appears she DID fire the librarian, but then re-hired her after an outcry)....it signals most succinctly to voters that she's the darling of the hard right. And this fired/not-fired fracas is just keeping it in the news.

[Dr. Sam]

WHICH COUNTRY IS PALIN TALKING ABOUT--THE ONE SHE WANTS TO SECEDE FROM?
WHY IS THE MEDIA IGNORING MCCAIN'S AND PALIN'S ASSOCIATIONS?
MCCAIN is going negative.You know he will use Ayers, Rev. Wright, Rezko and more—old narrative. Why is the media not calling attention to McCain''s own past; Palin has her own dirty lundary lists. WHY is the media not actively questioning Karl Rove-type campaign?Why should this campaign not be focused on issues and current economic woes of the country?Why are you not talking about McCain''s involvement in S&L bank scandal as a member of the notorious "Keaten Five"? That scandal earned McCain the honor of being the only member of Senate ever reprimanded for "bad judgment." Talking about keeping company, The Nation’s website in mid-September published a photo “of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party hosted by CONVICTED Italian FELON Raffaello Follieri” (See also The Nation, Oct.1/08). McCain wants to talk Jeremiah Wright; time for the media to remind him about Palin’s witch doctor pastor blessings in her church at Wasilla. Should McCain-Palin ticket win, are they going to be having siances in the White House? Palin talks about “Obama and terrorists” attacking “our country.” Which country is she talking about—the one she wanted to secede from as a member of secessionist organization in Alaska? And do you know that McCain’s brother is a communist sympathizer?

[skatscan]

I don't think the Bill Ayers reference will work, most people don't know who he is.

"Who's Bill Ayers?"

"He was in the Weather Underground."

"What instrument did he play?"

[Taan]

This country cannot afford another maverick in the White House. Looking at the damage the one we have in the Oval Office ought to convince even the skeptics.

[skatscan]

He was a maverick in the US Senate.

Maverick-AKA someone who couldn't get anything passed because he couldn't get anyone to agree with him.

[jgwynn]

Maverick-AKA lost cow (see the dictionary).

[Juanmanuelsotoarg]

Why doesnt anyone bring up PASTOR MUTHIE? and why is the Obama campaign so dukakis-kerry-like in NOT bringing up the KEATING 5 scandal.....the right is free to bring up wright and ayers!! for them, that is fair--so is keating and muthie!....and if sarah refuses to do serious interviews, then the networks should stop covering their campaign...

[Pepper14]

If Sarah was so bad and Obama is winning in a landslide why are the pudnits and media still trashing her everyday?

[wfalda]

Pretty dumb post, Pepper14. Was that supposed to be an insightful commentary? Watch SNL and Tina Fey next week in the weekly "Mimic the Gimmick" installment. If you are going to go down on Nov. 4. go down laughing. I'm on tenterhooks: how will SNL use Palin's remarks yesterday that Obama will pal around with terrorists? Stay tuned.

[MDHutchinson]

McCain should drop her from the ticket for those remarks. Utterly shameless.

[MDHutchinson]

"By any rational assessment"

Oh Bob, when are you gonna grow up and recognize that rational assessments don't work and THAT'S the reason you're 0-7 in Presidential politics. People remember the visceral, emotional moments. Facts, figures and statistics are nice, but if there's no heart, you lose. For the first 15 minutes, Biden got crushed. Then, he found his comfort zone and by the end, when he was talking about the difficulties facing families in today's economy, it was like he was channeling Bruce Springsteen.
The standards for Palin were so low that she could have correctly recited the ABCs and it would have been a victory after the Couric interview. But where Biden succeeded was not only in demonstrating a command of the issues, but in talking about them in an emotionally compelling way that resonated with a lot of the folks watching at home. You briefly touch on this in your second to last paragraph, and in general I agree with your analysis, but the fact is that neither Obama nor Biden has delivered a knockout blow in the debates, and McCain may be losing the battle, but he's going to be coming out swinging on Tuesday, and if Obama performs with the kind of bland mediocrity we saw from Gore and Kerry under your tutelage, this race could get real close real fast.

[stanrisdon]

It important to draw the right lessons from the 2000 and 2004 elections. Gore won the 2000 campaign, as a national campaign. Bush won 2004, because he had superior boots on the ground. Despite the fact that Kerry was a very weak candidate, and the fact that the problems with the economy were hidden with debt, Kerry lost the Electoral College by 100,000 votes in Ohio.

The last time the party in power got a third term, the economy was reasonably healthy (Bush 1). Bush and Rove gave us emotion. What we need is competence-remember Katrina? This is precisely what Biden communicated in the debate. No matter what one thinks of Bill Clinton (and I'm an unabashed fan), no one ever questioned his grey matter or competence. It was this trust that destroyed Bob Dole.

The election is Obama's to lose. Emotion is unpredictable. He needs to stay with the issues.

[MDHutchinson]

I like Bill Clinton too (now that he seems to have come back to the fold), but he didn't win because he's a Rhode Scholar. Granted, he is a brilliant man, but more impressive than his intellectual prowess is his emotional intelligence. He has the rare gift of being able to come off as sincere, sympathetic, reassuring, and confidence­-inspiring­. He's a man you want on your side, and definitely not the kind of person you want as an enemy.
Now take Kerry and Gore--perhaps equally intelligent, but in their campaigns, they came off as boring, stiff and generally not that likable, and their opponent, clearly a guy lacking in grey matter, seemed more relatable on an emotional level to most voters.
Obama has the same kind of charisma as B. Clinton, and when he's speaking, people are inspired and moved, not because what he says is intensely profound, but because he's able to reach them on an emotional level.
Yes, competence is paramount when it comes to governing, but when it comes to getting elected, the guy or gal who is able to successfully manipulate the emotions of voters is the winner, and if Obama isn't on his "A" game on Tuesday and he continues to let these character attacks go unchecked, I predict a 5 point drop in the polls in two weeks.

[cobobs]

Illogical speech with a jumbled salad of cliches always has a numbing effect on me and gives me a headache as my mind struggles to discern a pattern and to find meaning.

Am I the only one who experienced symptoms watching last week's performance? What scares me is that I work with people who thought she "won". What is this? Did I fall in the rabbit hole?

[MDHutchinson]

My only advice is just don't try. Allow the numbing effect to take hold, pop a couple xanax, try to keep from taking any baths with electrical appliances and hopefully in a month it will all be over.

[miffed]

How many different ways are we forced to say that it is frightening to think of Sarah Palin as the captain of our ship.

[maggieblue]

if it happens, i'm going off the plank, and so will the rest of the nation.

[Bluesman2008]

[quote]she's a joke...and so are the people that think she won the debate....[/quote]

That fact has been made abundantly clear by most here, far brighter than I. Why beat a dead horse. It's the other people, the ones who don't "get it", are the very ones who NEED to "get it". Not simply to prove that we're right, but because everyone needs to get it. Get it? So, it is, in my late night rantings, is that I'm suggesting that, for those who do, take it upon themselves to explain it to those who don't in any way you can (be creative, I know it's in you). Draw pictures if you must. Use stick figures if need be. Use several colors and use small numbers and limit any intercourse to monosyllabic content. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is clear.. Palin was obvious to me from the minute they brought her on stage. It must be made obvious to THEM. They fill the rust and dust of the old west. Time for a serious wakeup call I'd say, no?

[Promise]

I agree with Bluesman that the task at hand for us to not just to sit here night after night agreeing with each other, although a certain amount of that is comforting and probably necessary for our sanity. But the task is to convince the Joe Sixpacks or whoever likes this woman. I challenge folks here to come up with reasonable, credible suggestions about how to do that. The problem is that often we don't travel in the same circles. I don't know anyone who likes this woman, except distant very old, Republican relatives who are way beyond thinking. In '04 I had a friend who tried to tell me that God had chosen Bush. ( We are no longer friends.)

Suggestions anyone?

[WhyNaught]

Palin's use of language, however poorly, shows just how her mind works. In the Couric interviews, she commented something to the effect "I don't contribute all of mans activities to global warming" That's absolutely backwards, besides from being irrelevant (she's not qualified to make such an attribution).

In the debate, she made the same mistake saying something like "My executive experience can be attributed to my being chosen..." Really? The fact that she was chosen proves that she has executive experience? Maybe in her mind, but not to any reasonable observer.

Her complete lack of any sort of reasoned dialogue or logical flow of thought would be really scary if she were ever to be allowed anywhere near the metaphorical 'red button'. I'm actually scared for Alaska, seeing her ignorance be displayed over the last few weeks.

Shrum, you're absolutely right: McCain was the biggest loser in the VP debate.