My take on the VP debate

I’ve been waiting for this event for weeks now, and I have to confess something. I was a bit disappointed. I was promised a train wreck. They didn’t deliver. I’m sad.

Biden didn’t flub considerably, but he also didn’t attack Palin where he could have.

Palin didn’t trip over her lines and start talking about moose gutting.

So, the good clueless governor from Alaska didn’t fail. That’s mainly because she had a great script to follow. It only got to the end where she kind of ran out of regular stuff, and had some leftover Afghanistan rhetoric to spew out, so she’d just interrupt whatever was going on and say, “I have some extra stuff on Afghanistan, can I use it now?” I liked that.

What I didn’t like about Sarah Palin? The winking. I don’t like it when a politician winks at me. It makes me think that I’m in on their secret or something. Tell me something: When Sarah Palin was visiting with those heads of state at the Take Your Running Mate To the UN Day, did Governor Palin wink at them? I mean, when Sarah was having a discussion with Henry Kissinger, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe or Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, did she wink at them? If so, what did they think? “You can trust me to defend your interests! (wink!)” “I really think what you have to say is important! (wink)” Would JESUS wink at you? “You must turn the other cheek (wink)”

Biden, on the other hand, came out too sterile. Well, until the issue of his kids came up. Then the teardrops were juuuuussst about to fall. Joe caught himself just before the moderator Gwen ran up to give him his Oscar. Seriously, I thought Biden should have attacked Palin some, but remained aloof, and so let Palin be herself. In truth, by letting each person say what they wanted to say, the audience got to hear and believe what they wanted to believe. Palin fans thought she won, Biden fans thought he won, and the moderator has a book out on Obama coming out this week, so I’m sure her publicist thinks Gwen won.

Towards the end of the debate, Palin pretty much ran out of stuff to say, so she seemed to start repeating stuff from the beginning of the debate. Well, she might not have repeated it, but it sure sounded that way. Biden, on the other hand, was just getting warmed up.

Biden actually did quite well once he got going. In the long run, a lot of people will give him a lot more respect than they ever gave him votes in the various presidential primaries he’s run in. Biden actually sounded like someone who knew what was going on, and independent of the debate itself, Biden came up several notches in my opinion.

Palin, on the other hand wildly exceeded her ‘train wreck’ expectations. By simply not flailing and failing, she won. No, not the debate. The contest she was having with herself. The segments with Katie Couric made Palin seem like an idiot, and this debate will nearly reverse that. Now, you and I both know that the debate Palin was mostly a scripted event, but if she’s elected Vice President, most of the rest of her days will be just as equally scripted. It’s the unfortunate chain of events that would put her into the Presidency that would take her out of the scripted life and put her … well I shudder to think about it…

Biden is your winner, simply by resisting the urge to wink at the American Public when talking about our future.