When I started outlining a post about Thursday’s vice presidential debate, I was not going to make any predictions with regard to the outcome.
But I just can’t help myself.
Here is what I think will happen, in a nutshell: Palin does well, comes across as articulate and clean (as well as competent and confident), but does have one or two ‘uh oh’ moments that would be utterly ignored for any of the other candidates, but upon which the media will latch like lipstick-less pit bulls. Biden will be smarmy (goes without saying) and cocky, but won’t make any blunders too big for the media to ignore.
The wonderfully impartial Gwen Ifill will moderate. Although she is “so far in the tank for the Democrat presidential candidate, her oxygen delivery line is running out,” the bias will be applied with a light enough touch to maintain deniability: a few extra seconds for Biden to ramble; questions that are superficially neutral, but feed into Obama/Biden talking points; a focus on the candidates’ ‘experience;’ subtle attempts to throw Palin off her stride; etc.
The verdict? Just like last Friday’s debate, a win for the Republican that is spun by the media into a win for the Democrat.
The highlight reel will skip Biden’s numerous gaffes, and focus on any moments when Palin seems unsure or unable to answer, even if taken out of context. Also included will be any statements by her that point up the fact that she is a nutty Christian from the backwoods (e.g., against abortion, believing in God, ‘just got a passport last year,’ etc.). These highlights will be played alongside clips of similar moments from her earlier Gibson and Couric interviews.
The media plans to make her the next Dan Quayle. To some extent they may succeed, but mostly just with those already predisposed to believe it. It will ultimately fail, though, because Palin is no Dan Quayle. Quayle was smart, but was not a great public speaker, and often put his foot in his mouth. His misstatements, which are certainly no worse than Biden’s, made it easy for the media to portray him as an bumbling moron.
Sarah Palin, though, is a great public speaker. Even when, as in the Couric interview, she has struggles to frame a response to a question, she may not say something smart but she doesn’t say something stupid. It is a lot harder to parlay hemming and hawing into a ‘potatoe’ type Quayle moment than an outright wrong response.
She is also an attractive woman. Media culture tries to program us into thinking of men as oafish and incompetent, but women are almost invariably portrayed as smarter than men. This worked against Quayle, of course, but will work in Palin’s favor. Not to mention the hot naughty-librarian look, which makes her appear smart-attractive (as opposed to, say, bimbo-attractive).
Finally, and most importantly, she is common folk. The public will join in with gleeful schadenfreude to laugh at a spoiled little rich kid being brought low. But if you start knocking someone because they did not go to an Ivy League school, or because they have not traveled internationally, or because they do not know all the ‘right people,’ then you are not just insulting that person, you are insulting the public. Sarah Palin is an embodiment of the American Dream: she was just a PTA mom, running a small business, with a blue-collar husband. Then she applied herself, and with hard work and grit defeated the good-ol’-boys and became governor of her state, fighting corruption every step of the way.
Most people know that they are going to stay in roughly the rut they are in for the rest of their lives, and they accept that. But they love stories about underdogs and up-by-the-bootstraps heros. That is probably the biggest reason Palin is as popular as she is. When the media attacks her for being ‘common’ — which is what the majority of their attacks boil down to — then they are attacking the vast majority of the people in this nation. I have a hard time believing that people will simultaneously think “she is one of us” and “she is stupid.” I think they are far more likely to apply the Dan Quayle-like label back onto the media — the out-of-touch, spoiled elite.
UPDATE (October 1, 2008 at 11:37):
Hot Air links to a piece in the NY Times discussing her past debate experience. If they are attempting to play the expectations game for Biden, they’re not doing a very good job: they point out that she was effective in her debates, but also critique her answers as shallow. (The headline of the piece is “Past Debates Show a Confident Palin, at Times Fluent but Often Vague.”)
A great quote from the Alaska gubernatorial debate (Palin responding to criticism that she had not attended enough debates):
It’s been a year today that I’ve been on the campaign trail,” Ms. Palin responded, “attending many, many more forums, more debates, than either one of you, Tony and Andrew, because I had a primary opponent. You know, you got to have the balls to take it on in the early part of a campaign, and not just go right to the big show.
Heh heh.
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 05:46
A very plausible forecast of the outcome. No matter what happens in the “debate,” the Main Stream Marxist enablers have already written their stories slamming Palin.
What conservatives have to grasp is not that the liberals, who deign to rule b y their self-acclaimed superiority (sic), are not simply trying to “quayle” Sarah, they are out to obliterate her. To annihilate her. To remove her forever from anything to do with public policy.
Why the McCain campaign hasn’t raised the Ifill issue is way beyond me. These guys are living on a different planet.
As to the phony conservatives being wheeled out to trash Palin, well I used to listen to Krauthammer, but no more.
Hey Charles…. with whom you attend Washington dinner parties with all your liberal chums… give it a frackin’ rest. Okay?
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 06:55
[...] Palin v. Biden, and the Quayle-ization of Governor Palin | Counting Sheep [...]
on Oct 1st, 2008 at 08:47
re: “Why the McCain campaign hasn’t raised the Ifill issue is way beyond me.”
Perhaps because they approved the moderator? Both candidates had to, right? Trying to trash Ifill now would be like saying, “Yes, we know… we know… ANOTHER person we didn’t vet properly.”
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 09:08
The verdict? Just like last Friday’s debate, a win for the Republican that is spun by the media into a win for the Democrat.
Odd. Because I saw the media spin as being either that there was a tie or that McCain took it. Especially after watching all the hooplah in the Dem blogosphere around how many times Obama issued a variation on “McCain is right about that…”
But another thing that’s interesting is that every organization that did attitude polling before and after of independents found that they came out of the debate with more favorable attitudes toward Obama than going in. Over 30% in all the polls I was aware of, while McCain’s score on the same question was typically below 20%.
By my reckoning, it took several days for the MSM to pick up on that finding.
Anyway, the conventional wisdom in the MSM that I’m reading seems to be that if she’s not reduced to tears and mumbling gibberish, she gets a win.
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 09:23
“Perhaps because they approved the moderator?”
Huh?? Perhaps I’m thinking they should not have approved the moderator in the first place?
Unless, of course, no one in the McCain campaign had actually heard of Gwen Ifill-In-For-Obama?
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 09:54
It is not clear how much influence the campaigns actually had/have with the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD – the sponsor of the debates). The number and format of the debates was announced almost a year ago, 11/9/07. There have been only minor changes, such as swapping the foreign and domestic policy dates.
The moderators were announced 8/5/08.
I know that the campaigns work with CPD to iron out all of the details, but it is interesting that the CPD announced the moderators August 5, three days after Obama officially accepted its invitation but a couple weeks before McCain did.
Without any details of the negotiations being released, I think that anyone that claims that the McCain camp failed to ‘vet’ the moderators is the same sort the believes he did not vet Palin simply because that is what they want to believe.
Like I mentioned in the article, pretty much anyone that would be named moderator is going to have a definite liberal bias, so why not accept someone whose bias is open enough that it can be used against them?
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 09:57
It has been reported that the McCain camp did approve Ifill. It’s not a dictatorship, y’know!
They are saying they didn’t know about the book. But they must have known about Ifill. She’s been fairly vocal in Obama support.
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bdshepherd Reply:
October 1st, 2008 at 10:16
Not saying they didn’t approve her, but without knowing the alternatives it is hard to judge that decision (e.g., what other moderator might have been chosen, if the Obama camp objected and demanded other concessions, etc.).
As for failure to ‘vet’ moderators — that is completely backwards. A public official (legislator, judge, whatever) that sits in on a decision that directly effects his own interests cannot avoid the consequences merely by saying nobody asked.
Do we really hold our media to such a low standard that it is okay for them to have a conflict of interest and not put the burden on them to be up front about it? In my opinion, it is perfectly reasonable for the campaign not to know about the book until now. There is a presumption, right or wrong, that ‘journalists’ will not have a blatant conflict of interest.
As a practical matter, yes, this election has shown that the media cannot be trusted at even the most basic level. I don’t think it has ever been this bad (the hypocrisy of claiming neutrality, not the partisanship itself), and I don’t think the McCain camp should be criticized for not doing a background check on each moderator.
And I think that it helps: first, Ifill will have to be on her best behavior, and second, the already-low expectations for Palin’s performance get even lower with a known-biased moderator.
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on Oct 1st, 2008 at 11:18
[...] edited version of a comment I posted in the Palin v. Biden [...]
on Oct 1st, 2008 at 11:47
[...] Dookie Sister Toldjah Hyscience Jules Crittenden The Daily Conservative Pecanpii’s Weblog Counting Sheep Riehl World View America Needs Me INGunOwners Mcnorman’s Weblog Trust, But Verify What Bias? D.C. [...]
on Oct 1st, 2008 at 17:04
I say let them keep her and to be fair allow Limbaugh to moderate the next presidential debate.
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bdshepherd Reply:
October 1st, 2008 at 18:10
Ha! Sounds like a plan.
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on Oct 2nd, 2008 at 01:53
Both Senator McCain and Gov. Palin must stop playing by the rules the other side sets. That’s why McCain got the nod and why Palin was doing so well. Start talking to the people that will actually vote for them instead of trying to appease those that would never vote for them. Sarah isn’t “likeable” to people that have never met her because she’s courteous to lefty “journalists”, we like her because she’s “like us.” We (please permit me to speak for at least a number of people) would never sit there and answer “gotcha” questions without calling them out on it and we would have said “get someone else to moderate or you won’t have a VP debate.” We would have told Whoopi she was being ridiculous and that if not for the constitution and the way it was set up slavery would have lasted a lot longer. A constitutional republic allows for the minority to be heard and represented. Democracy allows for the minority to be exploited. If you talk the talk then walk the walk and stop taking this crap and your numbers will soar!
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on Oct 2nd, 2008 at 17:34
[...] The loony Left/MSM panic over Palin further reinforced its image as biased and out of touch, and sparked a backlash that drove Palin’s poll numbers through the roof. They have toned things down, while pushing the meme that Palin is stupid, but I don’t think that label will stick. [...]