The Debate: Quick Takes

• Most over-used adjective: maverick
• Most over-used word: "also"
• Most butchered word (*Blame Bush*): nucular
• Most missed real argument that was never mentioned: Barack Obama is up to his eyebrows in the sub-prime debacle.  His entire career before he entered public life centered on the "community organizing" that put the screws to banks in Chicago to lend to risky borrowers.  His closest political associates and allies are all implicated in this mess.
• 2nd most missed argument: Senator Biden voted against the Alaska pipeline.  'Nuff said.
• Most wretched phony assertion: "greed on Wall Street" with no mention of Congressional corruption.  This is an argument tailor-made for McCain, but it was 100% hands-off.  That omission will lose McCain the election.  This wasn't Palin's fault, she's hamstrung.
  
• Best word fluff: Palin calling Biden "Senator Obiden"
• Worst personal testimonial: when Biden started pulling out the story about how his wife and daughter were killed, and his son was in critical condition after a car accident.  He started to choke up.  All I could think of was, "Does he do this every speech?" Then I thought about John Edwards and his creepy, oft-retold about climbing onto the mortuary slab with his dead son.
• Most substantive comments about experience: Palin won this one hands down, because she has executive experience that she can take credit for, that she doesn't have to share around or qualify by saying "I brought this legislation [but it didn't pass]"
• Also, best one up:  Biden kept referring to "the commanding general" in Afghanistan, and how he said that the "surge strategy" wouldn't work there (John McCain " favors" a surge for Afghanistan).  Palin said, very specifically, that McClellan (close, really McKiernan, is the commanding general) had never ruled out a surge strategy, then ennumerated the specific characteristics of said strategy, and then modified for geography, and the specific differences between Iraq and Afghanistan.  It really shows she's been boning up, and she really did better in Biden's so-called area of expertise.  He was, after all, forced down in Afghanistan.
  

Overall, Biden was Biden, same ol', same ol'.  Sounds like a senator, and is a drab wash out.  Even though Palin called him out on some of his record, all he had to do was weasel out of it by saying, "That was a procedural vote," or something.  Typical senatorial blah blah.

Palin struggled in a couple of areas, getting the stumbles and repeating herself.  One was particularly bad-  she seemed to lose her train of thought and it began to sound like the staircase scene in "Tootsie": we were just sitting here wanting to do the Heimlich maneuver on her to get that answer out.  Otherwise, I would say, she acquitted herself rather well.  When she's strong, she's pretty strong, and she appears to be doing a remarkable job

And, the all important camera shot: Palin, of course, wins the camera shots totally.  Biden, on the other hand, not only had the plug issues (they really aren't that noticeable anymore) but it's clear that he has been botoxed.  He couldn't raise his eyebrows and the folds of his eyelids just slopped down over his eyes.  And the acres of plain, flat forehead simply calls attention to the receding hairline that the ugly plugs were meant to remedy... it's just a vicious cycle.  Get of the vanity train, Joe,  It's unbecoming.

Comments

[defender]

Perhaps we can hope that CRA, ACORN, etc. is in McCain's hip pocket for next week. However, it seems that the McCain campaign does not trust the voter's ability to comprehend the complexity, and perhaps the moral/legal dimension, of the mortgage debacle.

Sarah's pandering to the fourth-grade intellect (as newspapers are programmed to do) seemed a little too obvious, as did the "hate Wall Street" mantra. However, I am willing to concede on these tactics. Wall Street, and I, can get over it as long as it keeps the Marxists out.

[Michael]

We shall see, next Tuesday, whether John McCain wants to be President or not. If he lets them slide in one more debate, about the "greed on Wall Street" and the lack of regulations, and even O'Bama's part in the scandal, then I'd consider that prima fascie evidence that he would just as soon miss the upcoming mishugass and tzuris. I can't say that I'd blame him for that, but I wish, if he had not wanted it, he had kept out of the race, leaving the field to someone more motivated, and likely a better prepared candidate.

[Tanya]

Sarah said "nukular" in her first speech, the day McCain introduced her. I saw her two days later at the rally here in St Louis, and she said "nuclear." Now she's back to "nukular." I have a weird suspicion that someone's encouraging her to use the Bushism, but I can't figure out what the logic for that would be.

[bbmoe]

It's to the point where I, the daughter of a man who worked at Los Alamos, then marketed fast-breeder reactors to the Japanese (those were the days!) had to WRITE DOWN the word and repeat it to myself to figure out which way was right.