The catastrophe that is Sarah Palin knows no bounds. Tomorrow night she debates Joe Biden, the absurdly more qualified Democratic vice-presidential candidate who is expected to restrain himself from criticizing Palin too heavy-handedly (lest she rally the pity vote). But Biden’s strategy may be too timid. In recent days Palin has styled herself the “Joe Six-pack” candidate, a reference as pathetically self-congratulatory as McCain’s “original maverick” intonation in the presidential debate last week. But who knows, maybe this phrase will stick and Palin will reverse the Democratic gains from the past two weeks.
Which is exactly why Biden can’t be timid in tomorrow night’s debate. If Sarah Palin wants to call herself Joe Six-pack, so be it. There’s little Biden or Obama can do to dispel the notion that our moose-hunting friend from Alaska shares more in common with the average Joe than career politician Biden or ivy leaguer Obama. But what Biden can do (and Obama should do) is suggest that while Palin may indeed be Joe Six-pack incarnate, she doesn’t have any answers to the big important questions like Iraq, the financial crisis, Russia, inequality, education, etc. In other words, don’t let her claim to be a more capable representative of the people. But this shouldn’t be so hard. As we saw in the Katie Couric interviews, Palin is more than capable of embarrassing herself without too much effort from the other party. Biden, however, would serve himself and Obama well to highlight these mistakes and explain, humbly but directly, why Sarah Palin is unfit to serve as vice president of the United States.
I think Biden will win as long as he makes the debate an argument over the differences between the McCain/Palin philosophies of governance and the those of the Obama/Biden ticket. Palin can free-fall on her own, without any help from Joe. BTW, it’s scheduled for tomorrow night.
I agree that Palin can free-fall on her own, but vice-presidential debates have a history of being inconsequential. In order for Biden and Obama to take full advantage of this opporunity, I think they need to make the connection more explicit between Palin’s ineptitude and her potential failure in the White House should she ever accede to the presidency.
And thanks for the catch on tonight/tomorrow night.
someone suggested to me that one way to avoid the “pity vote” rebound would be for Biden to state that he isn’t really debating Sarah Palin or her views, but doing the job of pointing out how unqualified she is for her position. Such a strategy could avoid the feminist backlash that he is paternalistically looking down on a female candidate and focus on the fact that Palin is a person who is dangerously unprepared-regardless of gender. I would tend to agree with the point, but I think that it is the type of nuanced argument that Democrats tend to make that gets missed by the general public, so sticking with a toned-down attack style and letting Palin screw up for herself (which she appears more than willing to do) is probably a better strategy.
I think we’re all missing a crucial ingredient here: the ingenious McPalin expectation strategy. It’s all but been acknowledged by the campaign itself that Palin is an asset especially for recruiting the base of the Republican party, many of whom do not identify with McCain himself. So when she screws up on a major East Coast talk show, as any gee-golly outsider from Alaska is probably prone to do, who does it really hurt? Who really cares if the op-ed pages of the NYT and Obamaniacs decry her effort? In the end, can she energize the base that McCain almost lost? And I think that answer is “yes”. The base is looking for talking points — stuff about being hard-handed and strong (think the “maverick” bullshit); stuff about gay marriage (think the family values mantra); stuff about what an awful human being the other guy is (think the Ayers/Wright saga); stuff about liberal mythology (think the global warming farce); etc. And so what if she can’t form a complete sentence? By handbook protocol, simply blame the liberal — no, elite — no, “gotcha” — journalism and media for being so hard and not telling the people what they want to hear (which itself is prophetic since the campaign decides what apparently it is that we want to hear). Net net … wrap it all up and what do ya gat? Gravely low expectations. So — and I’ll shift to past-tense here — when she stood up on Thursday and spouted more constructive and formulaic rhetoric — i.e., she could complete an English sentence about said base-energizing issues — she became a winner in many people’s eyes. Think about it — the outsider who isn’t too familiar with — if not exploited by — these elite media types, who rises from that rubble (not her doing, of course), takes on this big Washington insider with such feisty language and confident physique. How could she not be seen as the winner by those who matter to her and her boss? Being pushed on the ground — by liberals, no less — only to stand up big and tall creates a bigger statement — certainly a bigger bang for your buck — than merely standing the whole time.
P.S. What do you guys think about her non-answer to Couric’s question about what she reads? I think — for the purposes of “her audience” — that it was a smart move. She says WSJ, and Joe Appalachia may think “Isn’t that the newspaper of all those Wall Street boys who have screwed my 401k?” She says NYT, and her friends from Alaska will wonder if she’s not an East Coaster in disguise. She says National Review and most of the country will say “What’s that?” She names a local Alaska newspaper and intelligent people will say “That’s her WORLDview source?” Etc. etc. etc.