Betcha Biden won; Palin awarded Ms. Congeniality

Truth in advertising: Sarah Palin announced immediately that she might not answer tonight’s debate questions “the way you want”.

She might as well have said that she was not going to answer most questions; she was just going to talk. And talk she did – fast and furious, and so charmingly colloquial.

Yet a few interesting things surfaced in that blizzard. She thinks a problem can be solved while ignoring its causes (that was about global warming). She thinks “changing her mind” on something is to be politically expedient (those budgets she did not like but signed “to move things forward”). She now likes the vice-presidency so much that she wants to take the office where no vice-president, not even Dick Cheney, as taken it before, with an expanded role in the Senate (betcha senators Biden and Obama would love that). We’ll never know if she does not know what an Achilles heel is, or if she chose to ignore the question because the woman who never blinks could not possibly have an Achilles heel, or admit to it.

By the very low standard that she had set for herself after the Kouric interview, she did well. She kept on talking and applied the first law of show business: if you fumble, just keep playing. You might get lucky and no one will notice. Who reads those pesky fact-checkers, anyway? She’s so happy with herself, she even thanked Gwen Ifill gracefully for not standing in the way: she’d love to do more of these events “without the filter of the mainstream media”.

When it was over, she was deemed “refreshing” by some commentators. Sexist? Betcha the McCain campaign is not going to protest that comment, though.

Yet, the first polls seem to indicate Joe Biden won the night.

In spite of time constraints (or “thanks to”?) he appeared knowledgeable. While she seemed relieved when her time was up, one got the distinctive feeling he could have kept on talking, putting his answers in context, comparing different perspectives, etc etc., etc… Precisely what made some democrats nervous. But Joe Biden is an old pro, and when it came to tying his friend “John” to the disastrous record of the past eight years, he was peerless. He knows John, John was a friend of his – and Sarah Palin does not know John’s record half as well as Joe Biden does. She was slightly better when she managed to deliver her attack lines against Barack Obama, but barely so. They sounded like recently acquired expertise. After all, as she said herself, she’s “only been at this for five weeks”. Hopefully, a little more than five weeks from now, she won’t have to “be at this” any longer.

Instant polls seem to reflect the fact that Americans think she’s quite likable, and he’s a politician, but guess what? People, especially undecided voters, seem to prefer a politician who knows what he’s talking about “a heartbeat away from the presidency”. Tonight John McCain’s running mate won Ms. Congeniality.

Complete post on Americana: here.