One Utah

One of Joe Biden’s biggest strengths is the fact that he’s knows a great deal about a great many things.

One of Sarah Palin’s biggest strengths is that she doesn’t know much but she’s very confident.

Palin’s history as a debater has been described as “glittering generalities.” One of her previous political opponents has written an interesting piece describing his experience:

On April 18, 2006, Palin and I sat together in a hotel coffee shop comparing campaign trail notes. As we talked about the debates, Palin made a comment that highlights the phenomenon that Biden is up against.

“Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, ‘Does any of this really matter?’ ” Palin said.

While policy wonks such as Biden might cringe, it seemed to me that Palin was simply vocalizing her strength without realizing it. During the campaign, Palin’s knowledge on public policy issues never matured – because it didn’t have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy.

Palin is a master of the nonanswer. She can turn a 60-second response to a query about her specific solutions to healthcare challenges into a folksy story about how she’s met people on the campaign trail who face healthcare challenges. All without uttering a word about her public-policy solutions to healthcare challenges.

(Emphasis added)

Don’t expect that to be any different tonight. Do expect, however, to see the side of Sarah Palin we haven’t seen - tonight she will be in full-blown “save my ass” mode. Thus far, her public appearances have been either highly scripted (her RNC speech) and well received - at least by the Republican base, or unscripted (Katie Couric) and disastrous. Since the Couric interview Palin has become a national punchline.

Mrs Palin is most comfortable, and most formidable, on home ground, and that is where she will attempt to fight tonight’s debate. But the potential perils for Mrs Palin are huge. She has given not one press conference since becoming a candidate, and only a handful of controlled interviews, some of which have contained moments of excruciating embarrassment: cornered on a subject she knows nothing about, her voice rises to a shrill bat-squeak and she plays for time, trotting out meaningless verbiage. Her facial expression can swiftly slip from feisty and combative to rabbit-in-the-headlights terror.

She needs to redeem herself. In normal times, simply doing well - avoiding any horrific gaffes, not throwing her usual word-salad in to fill time, not saying anything particularly insane - would be enough. We live in interesting times, not normal ones.

Palin, tonight, has to prove to the people who are tuning in to laugh at her that she’s not a punchline. She actually has to prove tonight that she knows things. Sarah Palin has to prove that she can rise to the challenge of leading a nation in which the overwhelming majority feel we are heading in the wrong direction. “Connecting” with the audience isn’t good enough. Her “down home” style isn’t enough. Tonight, Sarah Palin has to prove she’s ready to be Vice President; simply not failing is insufficient to do that.

Nothing in her career has ever prepared her to demonstrate actual knowledge or skill. Nothing in her career up to this point has required more than a superficial demonstration of knowledge and skill. Sarah Palin tonight has to be something she’s never been before - truly, deeply knowledgeable about domestic and foreign affairs. I doubt she’s up to it.

Sarah Palin is a small town girl who made good. She took the route many small town girls take - beauty pageant, school, job. She turned to politics and succeeded on a combination of chutzpah, good luck, and ego.

Sarah Palin may not be a serious person, but she takes herself very seriously. She’s also become a national joke - the batty, terminally smiling PTA member whose ruthlessness got her as far as it could. The Tina Fey SNL skit - including portions that were almost verbatim - would drive any even marginally normal person out of their skin. Palin - who apparently possesses a healthy ego - must be screaming in fury.

She has something to prove and she’s going to come out of the gates more like a bull than a bulldog, lipstick or no. She’ll be in full attack mode - jeering, snide, sophomoric, and callow, but with more bite than usual. IOW, a dumber, more personally aggrieved, version of Ann Coulter.

There’s a good chance that Palin is so rattled by Tina Fey’s dead-on impersonation and the public’s response to it that she’ll be off her game - badly off her game. Don’t bet on it, though.

She’s got something to prove - namely that’s she’s not an incoherent, empty-headed bumbler. Sarah Palin’s disastrous Katie Couric interview is the burr under her saddle. She’s got to live that down. She’ll come out on stage tonight with a fierce, burning determination to prove that interview was a fluke, a bad evening.

Palin has a long record of being a relatively strong debater - by being confident, offering vague generalities and rarely offering a direct answer. She’ll do her best to apply those strengths to tomorrow night’s debate.

If all we see tonight is the smiling, vague, generality spewing Sarah Palin, relying entirely on her aw-shucks folksiness, she will have failed to meet the standard expected of her. She will have deserved to fail.

This entry was posted Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 10:03 am and is filed under 2008 Election, Democracy, Elections, This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.