Let me start off by saying that Sarah Palin brought back the charm and personality that made people hopeful about her. She did not make huge blunders and looked very good at times. But a deeper analysis reveals other shortcomings that are important.
1) Sarah Palin spent most of her time legitimating her, if the term is apt, right to be on the same stage in order to fend off public perceptions that have waned about her competency over the past couple of weeks. She also shored up her role as the common mother and tried to distance McCain from Bush and to connect Obama with elitism.
2) Joe Biden spent most of his time legitimating Obama's competency and judgment to be the next President by focusing on core issues and differences between the two presidential candidates.
3) Palin reverted back too much to her stock of knowledge on energy and her life in Alaska in order to confirm the expertise that the McCain-Palin ticket has used to legitimate her nomination. Even when the question was about Darfur, she went back to Alaska and oil.
4) Biden made so many self-corrections that it was confusing at times. He rattled off too much "stuff" and it was very hard to understand to what he was actually referring.
I am surprised that Palin did not pick up on Biden's multiple self-corrections, but that would have not been a very good idea given her lack of experience. So he had some leeway there and I think we all knew that. His multiple gaffes in language and delivery were very minor, but we also know why he has not gotten a presidential bid in his many attempts.
Biden, however, focused his energy on where Obama and McCain disagree and where McCain's policies would not work well. The main reason is because he did what Obama did not do in his first debate – make a stronger tie between McCain and Bush.
The McCain campaign will pick up on his many figures and use that against him. They should. You don't need to know the actual data to understand that Biden had to have screwed something up the number of times that he corrected himself, and didn't (such as Iraq's actual surplus which he rounded up significantly). His biggest correction could have been devastating at the end when he almost brought Palin's autistic child into the fray. I am not sure if people caught that, but he pulled back from what what have been a monumental "gaffe".
Palin clearly was out to relate herself to the "average" American with her linguistic turns and folksy dropping of syllables and consonants at the end of words. She wanted Alaska to feel closer than it has ever been. To that end, I think she succeeded. But did she succeed in her handling of the substance of both the questions and the issues? I am not sure she did well enough even if she did not screw up as in previous interviews. She had her set of answers and offered them well enough. the problem is that her answers did not often fit the questions being asked. Nor did she help us understand how McCain is different from Bush, nor did she give us clear examples of how McCain is a maverick, only that this is the brand that they are presenting.
Final note: Biden was best in about three or four counters where he made distinct criticisms of McCain's "maverick" status, his tax policy, and how McCain's policy would actually not help the middle class (the bridge to nowhere stab was well played). Palin's biggest problem is that she did not use enough time with her responses giving Biden more time in his rebuttals. That gave him an advantage.
One gets the same feeling as if you are watching your team make a fourth quarter comeback that was a fantastic effort but came up three points short as the kick sailed wide right. That will be the difference in the polls as this plays out. If McCain pulls this out, I will be as surprised as a fan of a team where on that kick attempt, the ref calls an offsides penalty that gives them another shot at the kick, just a little closer for the attempt this time.
Image: Daily Dish
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