|
|
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sarah Palin Wins
Debate—by Darn
by
Walter Brasch
 |
|
Walter Brasch is professor
of journalism at Bloomsburg University and president of the
Pennsylvania Press Club. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed
‘Unacceptable’: The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina (January
2006) and Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush
(November 2007), both available through amazon.com, borders.com, and
other bookstores.
You may contact Brasch at
brasch@bloomu.edu
or through his website at:
www.walterbrasch.com.
|
|
The Republican leaders of the House of
Representatives grabbed a half dozen bags of sincerity, looked
directly into every TV camera they could find, and lied.
The vice-presidential debates proved one
thing. At the very least, Sarah Palin can be trained.
For several days, she had camped out in
one of John McCain's Arizona houses, where she underwent Debate Boot
camp conducted by drill instructors who make Marine DIs appear to be
slaggers.
With a few "darns," "betchas," and "ya"s,
Palin managed to get all her talking points into the debate, even if
she constantly changed the question to suit her note cards.
During the 90-minute debate, Palin six
times referred to her experience as the mayor of a 6,000 resident
village. Seven times, she specifically mentioned Ahmadinejad. Iran's
president, proud she knew the name, proud that she could pronounce it.
No one asked if she knew his first name or anything else about him.
Shades of George W. Bush in his first term trying to prove he knew
something about foreign affairs by enunciating the names of a few
world leaders—after several gaffes early in the campaign. Of course,
twice Palin was wrong about the name of the U.S. commander in Iraq.
Several times she noted she and John McCain are mavericks. About the
sixth time she mentioned it, Joe Biden finally unleashed his debating
skills. John McCain is no maverick he said in measured response. The
Republican nominee voted with President Bush four times to extend the
budget deficit, said Biden, who also pointed out that McCain went
along with Bush on numerous health care and education issues, most of
which were regressive rather than progressive, was one of the
strongest backers of going to war with Iraq, and opposed tax cuts.
Palin's answers were mostly glittering
generalities as she peppered numerous responses with cheerleader
messages about America, and even tossed in Reagan's "shining city"
example, and punctuated another response to Biden with a Reaganesque,
"Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again."
Her responses, after awhile, seemed to be more acceptable to a beauty
contest than a vice-presidential debate.
Both Palin and Biden had a few factual
errors, with Palin ahead in the count of misstatements, discrepancies,
and outright lies, according to factcheck.org, a non-partisan source
at the University of Pennsylvania. Possibly Palin's biggest problem,
and something that should coincern every voter, was that she bumbled
on the constitutional definition of the role of the vice-president,
something Biden quickly corrected.
Nevertheless, Palin came across as
confident, charming, and folksy, even giving America three on-camera
winks. She successfully muted her previous blunders in interviews with
TV news anchors Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, where she claimed
Alaska provides 20 percent of the nation's energy (it's only 3.5
percent), revealed the only Supreme Court case she knows is Roe v.
Wade, that like President Bush she probably isn't much of a reader,
believes she knows foreign affairs because Russia is a few miles from
Alaska, and disguised her lack of knowledge of vice-presidents by
claiming George H. W. Bush was the vice-president she admired the most
because he "kind of learned the ropes in his position as VP and then
moving on up." In that same interview, responding to a question about
what was the worst quality of the current vice-president, Joe Biden
said it was shredding the Constitution; Sarah Palin said it was "the
duck hunting accident."
In the debate, Biden threw specifics
after specifics. Almost every major online newspaper poll gave Biden
the win, especially among undecided voters, with several polls showing
him scoring in the 70s and 80s. The CNN poll showed that about 51
percent thought Biden did a better job, while 36 percent supported
Palin. At MSNBC, it was 78 percent for Biden. Even the conservative
Wall Street Journal readers polled online gave Biden 52 percent. The
ultra conservative Drudge report, however, gave Palin the lead at 68
percent.
But, this was also a win for Sarah
Palin. Expectations for her were so low that if she didn't shoot a
moose during the debate, people would be thrilled. In theatre, actors
learn that their first responsibility is to learn their lines and
don't fall over the scenery. In this debate, Sarah Palin knew her
prepared lines, and the scenery still stood after 90 minutes.
[Dr.
Brasch, an award-winning syndicated columnist, is professor of
journalism at Bloomsburg University and president of the Pennsylvania
Press Club. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State: The
Presidency of George W. Bush (November 2007), available through amazon.com and other bookstores. You may contact Brasch at
brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website at:
www.walterbrasch.com.]
comment on this article...
|
