About Last Night

I ended up undergoing a fairly interesting experiment last night. My basketball game in Waltham ended at 8:55, which meant I listened to the first half of the vice presidential debate on the radio, and watched the second half on TV (and after sticking out the Sox the night before, DVR-delay wasn't an option).

This was something of an unscientific experiment, because the first half of the debate was pretty domestic, and the second half pretty foreign. But from my listening/viewing, Sarah Palin was much better in the first half. Here's why.

After watching for a few minutes, I turned to Mrs. Save Fitchburg and asked if she had been reading her answers all night long. She had scribbled down her memorized bullet points while Joe Biden gave his answer, and then looked down and clicked right through them. On the radio, I though she was just sifting through the audio files and coughing them up as needed. Coming home and seeing that she was heavily reliant on her crib sheet lessened her performance.

That said, she did what she had to do. She didn't implode, she made some points, and she ran out the clock as necessary. I thought her answer on global warming was completely false and a real stretch. You could just tell that her programmed response wasn't really what she feels on that issue. That said, I didn't believe either her or Biden on same-sex couples (I think she secretly has no use for same-sex benefits of any color, and I think Biden secretly would approve of gay marriage. Just a hunch).

If you're a clear-thinking observer, you think Palin did fine. C+, maybe a B-. You didn't turn off the TV and think "I underestimated her." You didn't turn it off and think "Wow, was she a disaster." If you're a Palin hater, there was plenty of grist for the mill (I'd say, specifically, the "I've been at this for five weeks" line was particularly troublesome). If you're a Palin fan, you're thrilled with her effort to paint herself as a regular person (personal note: Is the vice presidency a job for a "regular person?"). You're happy with her attack lines, which were solid. You're feeling a little bit better about things.

I thought Biden was solid. B, maybe a B+. I watched on CNN, where he won the ridiculous analyst pie chart thing. More interesting, I thought he did better on the scrolling line graph of uncommitted Ohio voters. Even more interesting, the way that thing spiked every time Biden took off on George Bush. I thought Biden was better, but not by light years.

Finally, if you didn't know any better, Gwen Ifill gave no hint of bias, impropriety, or anything else. In fact, even if you did know better, and were looking for it, Ifill was perfectly fine as moderator. Dead issue (not that it ever really had much of a life).