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Debate Preview
DEBATE PREVIEW....The LA Times heads to Alaska to find out how Sarah Palin is likely to do in tomorrow's debate:
As she began her run for governor of Alaska, Palin repeatedly proved difficult to prep for a debate, recalled her two former political aides, who had pivotal roles during her campaign but declined to be identified because of their continuing involvement in Alaska politics.Palin, the former aides said, had a sharply limited attention span for absorbing the facts and policy angles required for all-topics debate preparation. Staffers were rarely able to get her to sit for more than half an hour of background work at a time before her concentration waned, hindered by cellphone calls and family affairs. "We were always fighting for her attention," said one of the aides.
But — you knew there was a but coming, didn't you? — apparently she's a fast learner:
By the final key televised debate in late October, Palin had grown used to the format, her aides and rivals recalled. Still using index cards, she was breezily confident in her back-and-forth with Halcro and former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles.....Larry Persily, a panelist questioner in the campaign's final televised debate, said Palin flummoxed her rivals "like Muhammad Ali dancing around the ring." She avoided statements and tough questions that could have impaled her and repeatedly stung her opponents. And Palin, a former sportscaster, was easily the most comfortable in front of the camera. "She knows television," said Persily, who participated in other debates and has watched Palin closely for years. "She knows how to look at her interviewer."
The good news for Joe Biden, then is (a) she doesn't prep very well, and (b) she doesn't get a series of debates this time, just the one. So if she stumbles out of the gate there's no time for her to improve. The bad news is that she might just wow everyone with her index cards anyway.
Bottom line: Tomorrow we'll either see Dr. Jekyll or Mrs. Hyde. Should be an edge-of-your-seat performance either way.
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I fear this debate could bring McCain back to life. There's no way she'll be as bad as she was in the Couric interview, and the format favors talking-point answers that she should be able to handle well.
Add to that Biden, who has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, and I'm down-right nervous about what's going to happen.
We should be assuming she will do at least OK, and perhaps decently well. As I've said in other threads, debate performances are not judged by substantive criteria, they are about leaving an impression of self and character. If her answers sound plausible and she seems confident and appealing, she will not embarrass herself. This will be true even if she is spouting nonsense.
The good news for us is that the best she can do is make herself less of a liability. McCain has to win the election himself.
Here inability to concentrate for more than 30 minutes at a time might explain why she bounced around so many colleges.
College is for people who can read for a significant block of time. She persevered and graduated, but here's another thing Sarah Palin used to her benefit that her movement wants to take away or at least severely limit access to: public education.
In short, had she had her way, Sarah Palin probably wouldn't be college material.
If she looks like she's using index cards she loses.
The Katie Couric interview may be the best thing that ever happened to the McInsane/Palin ticket. By merely being able to speak in complete sentences (which would be a drastic improvement over her CBS interview), Palin will be proclaimed a winner by the MSM. They have a vested interest in this race remaining tight.
I'm not so sure the public will go along. While most pundits declared the first Obama/McInsane debate to be a tie, voters clearly preferred Obama's performance.
It is possible, but extremely unlikely, that this debate will have ANY significant impact on the campaign or the vote. Both debaters will be careful to avoid or control their own weaknesses. Voters will see what they expect to see, and respond accordingly. The shouting heads will say "No knockout blows here; tie goes to Palin, who had to survive without a gaffe and did."
And it won't matter to the polling or the electoral outcome. My God,if Dan Quayle's trouncing by Lloyd Bentsen in the 1988 VP debate didn't have an effect, you can bet this sideshow won't either.
Of course, I'd love to be wrong.
I think the way Palin approaches abortion is very revealing. She talks about the choice of not aborting. She hijacks the language of the choice movement and turns it around. She uses this tactic with many issues. She's on all sides, that's her MO.
If Biden is smart, he should explicitly welcome her support of the choice movement. This will force her to either to correct him, distancing herself from the mainstream, or to be silent, thereby alienating the GOP base. I thinks this tactic can be used on other issues.
The typical politician debate is that both candidates do mediocre and the press and their supporters pretend that they did well.
This one is different in that the press is ready to dump on Palin and, conversely, she has an opportunity to star if she is willing to confidently take on the challenge. With the way perceptions are formed after debates, she actually only needs one or two good sound bites to "win" the debate. If she can't come up with some good sound bites in view of target rich opponents like Biden and Obama, then she really is not ready for prime time.
It seems the easiest target would be related to Biden being on the wrong side of virtually every foreign policy debate of the past 30 years and the prospect of an Obama getting advice from Obama.
It will be interesting to watch the debage. It is 90 seconds for each, then 90 seconds of time for back and forth. The back and forth is where Palin should try to shine.
Whether Palin is bad or marginally ok is much ado about nothing. This is and always will be an election between John McCain and Barack Obama.
Regardless of format Biden must put her on the spot and ask her questions directly.
"When she is good she'll be very, very good, and when she is bad she'll be horrid."
"[Palin] avoided statements and tough questions that could have impaled her"
So Gwen Ifell has to do what Couric has been doing, ask the same question over and over until Palin's BS drops away, and she gives an answer (or as close to an answer as she is going to give).
I hope Ifell realizes that.
Here's what I think we'll see:
Palin will come very near to ignoring the moderator's questions entirely so she can serve up prepackaged sound bites woven around a few folksy quips.
Conservative blogs and pundits will hail her performance as masterful.
Edge of my seat? Bah!
Here's what I think we'll see:
Biden will come very near to ignoring the moderator's questions entirely so he can serve up LENGTHY prepackaged sound bites woven around quaint folksy quips.
Liberal blogs and pundits will hail his performance as masterful.
Moooom!! Tell weenie to stop repeating everything I say!
Third piece of good news: Biden is comfortable in front of the camera, too. No advantage there for Palin.
The bad news: Biden's gaffes will be played endlessly after the debate. Palin's will be forgiven and forgotten.
Brian, everyone's favorite faux-reasonable Republican concern troll, doesn't have much to work with in defending Palin and so inadvertantly gives away the game:
With the way perceptions are formed after debates, she actually only needs one or two good sound bites to "win" the debate.
In other words, GOP spin doctors will seize on a sound bite -- which I'm sure she's being coached on, since she doesn't seem to be doing so hot learning current events -- to try to shape the perceptions.
Well, duh, Brian. The problem is, everyone knows that, and Palin's favorability rating is already in the toilet. Her softball interviews with Gibson and Couric are actually painful to watch.
Of course Republican asshats like you will try to spin it favorably (by the way, how did that work out for y'all with the mcCain debate?). Since everyone knows that already, the spin almost works against itself. Palin would have to actually do well to get a significant boost from the debate. And her recent performance, not to mention her life history, suggests that competence is beyond her.
No wonder you like her so much. Shame on you.
For wingnuts, she going to be great and Biden is going to be a bully. Spin Spin Spin. But for the rest of us, in our private thoughts, its going to be a cringefest. Its going to be ...what the hell did she just say? Its going to be GMFG! Palin is a rookie-league player, thrust into batting leadoff in the WS on a roll of the dice by McGambler. That's important to understand. She is not a considered choice, but a gamble. When half the conservative pundit class says she is not qualified, that gamble is a loser. Look for McCain to become more erratic as this contest goes on. I think the gambler persona fits.
Palin's not too bad in those Alaska debates. The response times were just short enough for a sound bite and not long enough for her to get in trouble. She looked confident and sounded good. Of course, her answers were meaningless.
So Gwen Ifell has to do what Couric has been doing, ask the same question over and over until Palin's BS drops away, and she gives an answer (or as close to an answer as she is going to give).
I believe the debate format precludes that, even if Ifill had the stomach for it. (Ifill is a villager through and through.)
Caribou Barbie is vacuous, shallow, empty-headed and probably hasn't read a book since high school - which is why 48% of America loves her. She is just like them!
Palin is too stupid to understand just how dumb she is. Hence, lack of confidence will not impede her debating style. If she only knew how little she knows and how little she cares to know, she would be too embarassed to show up.
Even with the shorter times for Palin/Biden to respond to a question there's still plenty of time for Palin to hang herself. In the interviews with Couric, Palin hangs herself within a matter of 10 seconds in a lot of the questions. Hopefully Ifell will steer her back to answer the question as Palin's game plan appears to be to evade the question and try to connect with the viewers through some pandering compliment of some sort and despite what I hear a lot of, I don't think Biden should ignore her at all, everytime she fails to answer a question Biden should give the correct answer very quickly and then ask why she evaded it.
Somewhat related, here's an hour long interview with Ifell from March 31st of this year in AZ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foWmhUhRcms
At about the 36 minute mark she starts talking specifically about McCain.
I think she'll be very comfortable and prepared with questions she's had to deal with before (experience, pro Life, evolution/creation, energy).
The wild card is topics that are expressed to her in unfamiliar ways that she thinks she ought to be able to answer and tries to wing it. Palin has always relied on her manner and personality - my read of her is someone who thinks she can persuade through her sincerity. She doesn't think analytically, more in terms of "how can I show you I'm the sorta person you should be able to trust."
I expect something a bit similar to the Battle of Jutland - long range fire, indecisive outcome. The old line there was that Admiral Jellicoe was the one man who could lose the war in an afternoon. Not expecting that to happen tomorrow.
So we have a debater who doesn't have the discipline to really work at prepping for the debate, who in a situation where she had to endure a dozen or so debates on topics that she had some grounding in, being particular to the state she was born in and lived her entire life in, finally got the hang of it all toward the tail end of all those debates. That about sum it up?
Now she has one shot at a debate covering topics that, if her interviews are any indication, she has never given a serious thought to until last month. Some subjects are so far off her radar that, until the prep, she may not have even known they exist. I'm sure she will know enough to connect Wazirestan to Pakistan, but heaven help her if Ifil asks a question about Darfur and fails to cue her that she is talking about Sudan.
In the end, I'm sure that she will do well enough to satisfy the hard right Kool Aid drinkers, but her overall poll numbers will come in under McCain's numbers. Palin's problem is that she has no foundation on the national and international issues and a couple of weeks of debate prep, while sufficient to get a person of above normal intelligence up to speed, when they are familiar with the territory, it will never work for filling in the gaps that a lifetime of disinterest and indifference leaves. Not even a genius could prepare for this debate in the time allotted without the proper foundation. And we know that Palin is lacking the foundation. Her best hope is that Ifil asks at least one question about oil and gas exploration and/or production. That will give her her best shot at sounding confident and knowledgeable on something. Not something that it is terribly important for a POTUS to be confident and knowledgeable about, but a start.
Palin was a Hail Mary pass and the receiver is bobbling the ball on her fingertips now. It is a pretty safe bet that the ball will drop tomorrow night.
Don't overanalyze this debate. Ninety nine percent of the good folks who think Palin is just peachy are only waiting for her to toss off a clever and memorable line. A "gotcha" and they will be satisfied. This debate will certainly not be about substance. Palin has none. I only pray that any independent or undecided voters remember that this is about the Presidency and Vice Presidency of the United States, not about sound bites and clever one-liners. But it seems like a large part of the electorate is more interested in her hair and sass, rather than her intellect and capacity to govern.
I don't think she'll be able to do the presidency from index cards. You kind of have to be able to sit for more than 30 minutes in those top level security briefings and absorb a lot of complicated information. Hmmm...
In all professions, there are expectations and required knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Palin must suffer from a disorder of grandiose thinking, elevating her self to a competency at which she is not. McCain hovering over her like a protective father, muttering something about "gotcha: journalism. All of the idiots who fail to see the truth about Palin have got to be delusional. We are in a huge train wreck after having elected the dimmest bulb in the box in the last two elections. It is time to value an intelligent, educated, and informed leader, a leader who reads books and has the ability to think and see the big picture. Palin only see her narrow, self-serving, limited view. She would be dangerous if she became president. I would like to know why she transferred to so many colleges. I would like to know what she reads, or if she reads. Can she read?
Obviously, comprehension and the ability to answer questions to serious questions are disabilities for her. Intellectually, she is a loser. Psychologically, I would request one read the symptoms of Grandiose/Delusional thinking. She elevates herself to a level at which she is not. There is a certain competency required to the job to which she is "interviewing." We cannot dumb questions down to her level, i.e., "What is your favorite food?" "What is your favorite color?"
The demands of leading a country in a gloval world are way beyond this woman's understanding and competency.
I cannot believe that McCain chose her and made a mockery of this election. Time for change means time to bring in leaders who can speak in complete and coherent sentences. Palin seems like Geroge Bush in a skirt. Just as ignorant. Just as delusional.
It's been mentioned above, but I'll say it again:
She can't win this debate with index cards.
So, can she win it without?
Democrat opponent in Alaska in 2006 specifically said she answered debate questions with 'gibberish'
Shouldn't someone be talking to him?????
"There's no way she'll be as bad as she was in the Couric interview, and the format favors talking-point answers that she should be able to handle well."
"We should be assuming she will do at least OK, and perhaps decently well."
Okay, why does anyone think these things?
Why?
Couric gave her another shot. She even brough her grandpa along. She did an "interview" with the sycophant Hugh Hewitt.
She still sucked. So far, she has always sucked.
Can anyone point me to some other magic transformation we have at any time witnessed, someone going from public dufus to reasonably acceptable smart person?
I'm sorry to say you're probably right. We are a stupid nation full of stupid people. Of course they like her - she's not showing off her smarts and making them feel stupid. She knows how to play.
Joe: "Add to that Biden, who has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, and I'm down-right nervous about what's going to happen."
Biden has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth? What about gaffe-a-minute Governor Palin?
And why hyphenate "downright"?
If we could only get Putin's head to come into her airspace tonight!
Not that I'm surprised from a MoJo blogger, but this was a well-done debate assessment. More than anything, though, I thank you for pointing out what has so far gone unnoticed in other press: THERE IS NO GENERAL MCCLELLAN. Kind of a key mistake from such a foreign policy novice. At a time when most debates don't even mention other FP issues beyond the Middle East and South Asia (heard anyone talk about North Korea or China?), you'd think she might have studied up enough to get those right!