I won't make many friends here at DU with my weekly newspaper column published today, but this is how I saw it.
Also available online at:
http://cumberlink.com/articles/2008/10/03/opinion/columns/rich_lewis/doc48e61cabaf82f503301551.txt***
Good night for Palin, better for Biden
By Rich Lewis, Sentinel Columnist, October 3, 2008
Last updated: Friday, October 3, 2008 9:25 AM EDT
Sarah Palin did not win the election in last night’s vice-presidential debate, but she almost certainly saved her own political career.
And that means it was a very good night for her.
Recent interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric had left Palin teetering on the edge of becoming a national joke. She was taking a brutal and well-deserved beating at the hands of comics, most notably Tina Fey and the writers for “Saturday Night Live.”
Many people expected Palin to fall over that edge last night — to irretrievably seal her reputation as an airheaded ditz, laughably unqualified to hold political office at any level.
It didn’t happen. Though inconsistent, Palin performed well. She was comfortable at the podium, skilled at maneuvering the discussion onto her ground, capable of expressing her answers in clear and sometimes moving language and able on occasion to project a very appealing “plain folks” charm.
In short, not at all stupid.
She clearly “lost” the debate to Joe Biden because she was stuck defending an increasingly indefensible running mate and his largely indefensible positions.
She also lost because Biden had a terrific night, matching her across the board in both style and substance and easily overwhelming her on a number of issues by virtue of his greater political experience and substantially more specific policy proposals.
Nonetheless, Biden and Palin together staged a debate vastly superior to last week’s somewhat boring and incoherent presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Moderator Gwen Ifill gets a lot of credit for that as well. Her questions covered a wide range of topics, were fairly posed and did not serve up the usual slimy irrelevancies. Not a single mention of churches, pigs or flag pins, no coy “gotchas.”
The great fear among Republicans was that Palin would melt down and outright lose the election during the debate, and I am sure they are greatly relieved that she did not.
But all she did was stabilize the ticket’s position — keep it from losing ground. That can’t be any real comfort to them, because the McCain-Palin ticket is now seriously behind Obama-Biden. Every major poll shows the two Democrats pulling away in key state after key state (including Pennsylvania by 8 to 15 points). They are ahead, mostly way ahead, in all the states won by John Kerry, and ahead, if only slightly in some cases, in a clutch of states that went Republican in 2004 — including Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico and Nevada.
Just yesterday we learned that McCain has given up on Michigan, once considered a “battleground” state that many believed McCain could switch from blue to red.
Fivethirtyeight.com, which regular readers know is a site that I respect for its careful methodology and complete transparency, gives Obama an 84 percent chance of winning the election and projects him winning 331 electoral votes to McCain’s 206. It probably won’t be that big a blowout, though it could be. Nonetheless, barring a dramatic development in the next 30 days, the Democrats are headed toward a victory.
But Palin was at risk of losing more than a presidential election last night. She was in serious danger of losing her entire political career. Her gaffes had caused her national approval ratings to slip significantly in the past few weeks, both nationally and in key states (again, including Pennsylvania). Even Alaska, her home state, where she once enjoyed an 80 percent approval rating, was turning against her. The headline on an AP story by Matt Volz this week couldn’t have been more alarming: “Alaskans cringe after month of listening to Palin.”
“I’m very hopeful that she doesn’t embarrass us worse than she already has,” Mark Barnhill, a 53-year-old building inspector from Anchorage, told Volz ahead of the debate.
“Most” Alaskans, Volz wrote, “are surprised at how their usually confident governor has foundered in interviews, giving rambling answers that... either go against their own recollections or end up lampooned in ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits and by the hosts of late-night talk shows.”
Had Palin self-destructed during the debate, and the ticket gone on to lose the election, she would have been permanently marked as a failed politician — an everlasting icon of ineptitude. The new and worse Dan Quayle.
With her performance last night, Palin ensured that, even if McCain loses in November, she will be a force in Alaskan and national politics for years to come. Only 44, I expect that she will eventually run for and win a U.S. Senate seat and will be among the GOP’s brightest stars as the party rebuilds from the impending loss of the White House and a string of Senate seats. She will do some traveling abroad, read more widely, fill those gaping holes in her knowledge of world and national affairs. Next time, she will be ready.
And the point is, there will now be a next time.
The audience for last night’s debate was expected to be huge — and many of those millions and millions of viewers tuned in mostly or even entirely to see Palin. It was her one post-convention showcase moment in the campaign.
They didn’t see a fool or a clown. They saw a confident, competent, fluent and engaging politician hold her own against a very powerful opponent. Not perfect, but not Yukon Barbie either.
No, she didn’t win the debate; she won’t win the election.
But she won back something very valuable nonetheless.
Her dignity.
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Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is:
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