QotD: In the Hot Seat

What did you think about the Vice Presidential debate?

I tuned in last night to the Vice Presidential debate expecting it to be an entertaining train wreck by Palin. It turned out to be less spectacular than I had hoped.

Sarah Palin succeeded in that debate. But the bar for success was set so incredibly low that that's not saying much of anything. She managed to not say anything that was totally false or reflected much on her lack of knowledge about how everything worked. But that's probably because she didn't say much of anything at all. From the very beginning her answers were carefully crafted to say nothing in as many words as possible. She let fly so many buzz words and catch phrases in the first 30 seconds of the debate that I was worried she was going to run out by the end of it.

All she did was to repeat the McCain campaign message, and do it in a very "folksy" way which, to me, felt more like she was talking down to me. She had this tone of voice like she was talking to a child saying "No, honey, let the adults handle this, everything will be ok". She also spent a HUGE amount of time talking about Alaska. I found that off putting because, face it, Alaska is pretty different from the rest of the country.

Biden I thought did better. He was a mouthpiece for Obama, no doubt, but he also seemed to have his own opinions on the matter and was capable of articulating them. Palin may have put him on the defensive early but that's only because she was dodging the questions and spewing out flat out lies (that Obama voted to increase taxes on people making more than $42,000 is a flat out lie and has been proven so).

So in the end, not the knockout punch I was hoping for, but I'd give the win to Biden. He may not have been quite as smooth as Palin was in her rehearsed statements, but he had more content. And that's what it's all about in the end.

If McCain gets elected and then has to step down for some reason, I would be very scared if Palin were to step up to the highest office in the land. That thought terrifies me.

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