The cable news consensus is clear: because Sarah Palin did not run away, break down and cry, or concede defeat on stage, she therefore won the debate.
I think all she did was prove that she's better at reading cue cards than she is at answering questions on her feet. And make no mistake, she was- did you notice that after nearly every question she stalled for a second and fiddled with her notes?
It wasn't Biden's all-time greatest performance, but not his worst either. He committed no big gaffes, and no Rick Lazio-type blunders, and had a couple of strong flourishes, especially in the "around the kitchen table" section.
Gwen Ifill didn't help matters, asking virtually no follow-up questions and not pressing on the numerous occasions when Palin gave answers that had nothing to do with the question.
But there were other mistakes: Palin called for the constitutional authority of the vice president to be increased (!), gave an answer on nuclear energy that, like many others, was a run-on sentence that made no sense, and used "I’ve only been at this for five weeks” as an argument IN FAVOR of her candidacy, as opposed to the opposite.
Was Palin's performance the unmitigated disaster of her Gibson and Couric interviews? No. But is she still an unmitigated disaster as a candidate? Oh yes.
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 2, 2008 11:05 PMIt's comforting to know that there's at least one pundit out there that thinks what I'm thinking. Thanks, Steve!
Posted by: jabbett at October 3, 2008 09:43 AM