(V)eep!
I’ve held off on commenting about the Biden/Palin Vice-Presidential debate last Thursday night, but suffice it to say I watched in stunned amazement as the critical political process of The Last Remaining Superpower(tm) was reduced to a middle-aged man apparently debating world politics with a grade-schooler.
Seriously, if you didn’t see it, you cannot begin to imagine how empty and dull (in both content and presentation) Sarah Palin’s performance was. Her much-vaunted ‘normalness’ (and seriously, how many ‘normal’ people become State Governors? And seriously, do you want ‘normal’ people running your country? I want exceptional people running mine thank you) was boiled down to soundbites about “Joe Sixpacks and Hockey Moms”. Her understanding of international relations amounted to a claim to love Israel. She actually threw “some of my friends are gay” into the discussion, surely the first time that hoary old chestnut has been aired at these rarified heights of discourse.
And she tried to pull off ‘cute’ by using gimmicks like “Can I call you Joe?” and winking at the camera. I’m not kidding, she fucking winked at America in an attempt to divert its attention from the horrifying prospect of her as its leader if when McCain keels over mid-term. I honestly thought I saw US politics die at that moment.
And she explicitly said she wasn’t going to answer the questions put to her, but say the things she wanted to. And that’s exactly what she did:
“Governor, please if you want to respond to what he said about Sen. McCain’s comments about health care?” “I would like to respond about the tax increases.”
She is, beyond question, the worst excuse for a political debater I’ve ever seen (and I spent three years in student politics…).
And she’s matched by the sorry excuses for ‘analysis’ that filled so many TV hours and column inches following the debate, which somehow considered her to be the ‘winner’ in this contest. The only way to look at this (and plenty of people have made this observation) is that expectations for her were so stunningly low that not actually tripping and hitting her head was enough to make her look good.
Biden, to be fair, was a bit dry and a little pompous in places, but his command of issues and god help us facts was a billion times better than his competition.
Unutterably depressing.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am
But does America actually want someone who knows what they are talking about, or someone in touch with Joe six-pack ?
I would suggest you get the leaders you deserve but we’ve got Brown in charge…
October 21st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
We got what we deserved. We voted for them, and knew this would happen. Sad but true …