Can I kick it? No, you can't.

Pretty good, and about what I expected. Biden has plenty of experience an a masterful command of the facts, and Palin knew her answers well enough to not freeze up, even when some of those answers had nothing to do with the question posed.

People seemed to like Palin's folksiness, and that has been her strong suit, definitely. Even when the candidates first entered the stage, she could be overheard asking Senator Biden if it was all right if she called him Joe. I didn't realize until later what that was actually about.

The line that she delivered that seemed to enrapture her groupies the most was when she chided Biden for noticing that, while time only moves forward, we as humans have the capacity to recall things that have happened before. Sometimes, we even make the connection between present circumstances and things in the past that led to them. I find it a useful quality, which keeps me from putting my hand down on a hot stove ever again. Not so the governor of Alaska:

"Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future."

Now, the worst part of that is how transparently stupid this notion is. It seems like we might go ahead and let Wall Street do whatever the hell they want now, since remembering that they just destroyed the economy is "backward-looking."

The most pathetic thing about her answer is that it revealed how utterly scripted Governor Palin was. She was ready to recite it for over an hour. And she knew she couldn't deliver it effectively, unless she first received Senator Biden's permission to call him Joe.

Palin did fine last night, and if you're comfortable with that, vote for that ticket. If you realize, as many did, that her performance last night is the absolute best that she's capable of, you may still have grave concerns. Like many other politicians, when she has a script to work from, she's quite good. I, however, looking to the past for lessons, worry about how this sort of politician reacts when the script is gone, and no one is telling them what to do.

Friday, October 03, 2008