Early in Thursday's vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin disrespected the live audience and the millions more watching on television by stating she would not answer questions directly. Joe Biden wisely stuck to answering moderator Gwen Ifill's questions and avoid going off on long-winded tangents.
It remains to be seen if most of the electorate will allow themselves to be hoodwinked again. In post-debate news interviews with some voters, Palin supporters said the Republican governor of Alaska talked like them and related to them.
The United States is in deep trouble because twice a personable incompetent - Dubya, the short timer currently occupying the White House - was elected.
Pardon me, I don't want the kind of president who might be the chap to have a beer with me at the corner bar. I prefer a commander in chief who does his homework rather than go with his gut, process intelligence from his experienced advisers, and exercise good judgment. George W. Bush in eight years failed miserably on all three counts.
Meanwhile, his vice president, Dick Cheney, has run roughshod over the Constitution and separation of powers as Biden, the U.S. Senator from Delaware, noted Thursday.
Rational people should agree that Biden, the six-term senator and foreign and judiciary expert, won the debate on substance. The bar was set low for Palin, who said recently that governing a state with borders on the edges of Russia and Canada counts as foreign policy expertise. Yes, she said that.
Palin did not fall on her face Thursday, so to a number of GOP partisans, the governor did well by the lowered standards. Still, wreckage from the Katie Couric interviews of Palin lingered. That was because Palin introduced new material to the laugh video.
During the debate, Palin said she's governor of the largest U.S. state. Really?
OK, Alaska is huge in land mass, but it ranks 48th in population.
People-wise it is about the size of the city of Memphis.
Itty, bitty Delaware with 1/266th of Alaska's land mass has many more residents.
Furthermore, Alaska is a semi-socialistic state. About two decades ago, when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker crashed and fouled the wilderness, us mainlanders learned that Alaskans received free salmon annually. Also, the state depends on lots of federal dollars because it is so vast, sparsely populated and isolated.
So Palin should spare us the frontier maverick bravado.
Palin's candidacy is embarrassing. She's not mainly at fault. Most of the blame goes to GOP presidential candidate John McCain, who exercised poor judgment and made a novelty choice for running mate.
Midway into the debate, I heard Palin blurt out that "she's only been at this for five weeks," a telling off-the-cuff remark on how woefully unprepared she is to possibly assume the position of commander in chief.
Lately, so-called "intellectual conservatives," i.e. George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Kathleen Parker of the pundit world, raised objections about Palin's competency and McCain's judgment. Supporters enamoured with the perky hockey mom and the blustery war veteran/POW told the conservative scribes to hush.
Stop warning them about the approaching iceberg.
