My Sunday column, extension of Palin blog

What did Sarah Palin accomplish in VP debate

Exceeded expectations. Really?

Exactly whose expectations for what did Sarah Palin exceed in Thursday night's vice presidential debate?

"She stanched the bleeding of the McCain-Palin ticket," GOP spin meisters said. "She has re-energized the base."

Liberal pundits said she made no huge gaffes, and neither did Joe Biden and gave the win to Biden.

Associated Press presidential campaign correspondent Liz Sidoti wrote in vapid analysis after the debate: "Joe Biden's job was to attack. Sarah Palin's job was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script.

"While both vice presidential candidates succeeded in their only debate of the campaign Thursday night, the stakes were much higher and the bar was much lower for Palin. So, in the contest of low expectations, Palin won."

Really?

Let me get this straight: We are in the middle of a recession, which could turn into a full-blown depression. We just spent $700 billion as a down payment on who knows how much to keep the economy from totally imploding. We are fighting two active wars and are in precarious relationships with Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. We have a nearly $11 trillion national debt.

We face a global hunger crisis; genocidal campaigns in Sudan; insecure relationships with Western Hemisphere democracies many Americans don't like; global climate change; recovery from massive flooding along the Mississippi and three hurricanes; 45 million Americans without health care insurance; no consensus on immigration issues or border control; crumbling and inadequate infrastructure; an energy crises. Need I go on?

Given that five of the last 12 presidents first served as vice president and this will be the only time we see these two candidates together before one becomes a heartbeat away from the presidency, I think the American people had the right to expect more than "a contest of low expectations."

What I saw Palin demonstrate was that she could be on a stage without swooning or throwing up, she can read note cards, memorize some lines and cute (if fakey,) folksy lines, and deliver a stinging, rehearsed jab. And "ya betcha" she can smile, flash her dimples, bat her eyes and wink at every cute line as if it's an inside joke between her and the audience. I guess that is a step up from not knowing the titles of magazines or newspapers she reads or knowing what the Bush Doctrine entails. It beats having to come back later with an answer. But she did not debate.

She learned the tactic from her debate coaches of taking any question she didn't like and turning it to a quote from an earlier sound bite about energy independence or tax cuts. But she couldn't think on her feet, at all. She charged that Obama voted against funding for the troops and that was un-American. Biden came back with his charge that John McCain had voted against $1.6 billion in funding for up-armoring vehicles for the soldiers because McCain said the bill involved a timeline. Perhaps there was an explanation of why McCain voted against troop funding, but she didn't give it.

In his strongest moment of the debate, Biden refuted her charge that for a "change" ticket Obama-Biden certainly looked to the past a lot, talking about the failures of the Bush Administration. "Past is prologue," Biden said, and launched into a series of requests to learn of any plans McCain and she had advanced that differed from the Bush-Cheney line, "I haven't heard anything yet," he said. She flashed that deer-in-the headlights look, paused a long time and waited for Ifill to change the subject.

That brings up another point of reduced expectations for this debate. The trend over the past 12 years has been for more and more scripted debates, with more restricted formats every election cycle. Two days before the debate, McCain charged that Ifill was biased because she has just written a book about Obama. Perhaps she should have recused herself. She had a perfect out because she fell and broke her ankle a day or so before the event. Instead Ifill seemed to bend over backward not to confront Palin on failing to answer questions.

In fact, Palin looked directly into the camera and said that she might not answer questions like the moderator and her opponent wanted, but she would speak directly to the people -- an obvious tactic.

The McCain team has so "worked the refs" during this campaign that they have produced the most insipid and opaque vice presidential run in recent history. First they refuse to allow the press access to her. Then they negotiated the "scripted press conference" style for the vice presidential debate. Then they grant recorded, private interviews with selected commentators.

Fortunately for America, Katie Couric stood her ground and although she was polite and asked questions that any relatively bright high school graduate could have answered, she stumped Palin again and again. Will we ever see an actual press conference in public? We deserve to.

Biden's coaches, too afraid he would offend supporters of the gun-totin', wolf-shootin', Cutie Pie of the North, bound him to smile knowingly when he could have pressed points on which he had an obvious advantage, like how the economy works or the stakes of international diplomacy.

I think their job was to tell us how they would run the country and to explain to us how they would solve our real problems. Silly me, I expected substance.

KATHY WILLIAMS is assistant city editor of the Herald Democrat.