I expect most of you watched this evening’s entertainment. It is hard to imagine when in history more opinions might simultaneously have been publicly expressed than at this very moment, and I don’t suppose mine is very much different from anyone else’s, but here it is: Sarah Palin handled herself about as well as anyone could have hoped she would, and Joe Biden handled himself every bit as well as he needed to.
What McCain supporters feared, and Obama supporters hoped for, certainly did not happen: that Ms. Palin would continue, for an hour and a half, to embarrass herself as virtuosically as she did in the few minutes she spent last week with Katie Couric. She managed to express the appropriate “talking points” safely, confidently, without wandering out of the shallow end of the pool, and without melting away into rambling and incoherent babble. Her legions of supporters — wherever uncertainty is for sissies, and men of God clog the creeks with the saved — will be thrilled.
This has to count as a victory of sorts for her. Samuel Johnson once said: “A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Ms. Palin’s sex is irrelevant here, of course, but the quotation seems apt.
9 Comments
Gidget Goes To Washington.
I suppose when one finds oneself about to participate in a VP debate and one is on the Republican ticket, it is a good thing to bone up on figures historical who also happened to be Republican. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
Abraham Lincoln had problems with a recalcitrant General in a war. So (per paragraph 3):
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/10/02/the-palin-strategy.aspx?GT1=38001
Published Thursday, October 02, 2008 10:43 PM by Christopher Beam
I was sitting through one class this morning considering last nights’ debate. Something, I missed something, I know I was looking for something. First class done, onto Accounting.
My vision was blurry in that class. I took my glasses off to clean them when suddenly, horribly I realized that “something” actually was missing. It was as Sarah stared into the camera last night, something about the eyes I was searching for, through her glasses.
As I cleaned my last lens and looked through my glasses I felt this sinking feeling-it was like looking through Sarah’s glasses-the windows of a foreclosed property, realizing-
Crap! Even the caretakers’ gone.
Dammit I wish someone else was commenting here.
I’d cast my vote for Ulyseses S. Grant.
Gosh darn it, I don’t know how to spell the name of the old fart I’m gonna ignore, and besides in Alaska we spell Homer differnt. Gosh darn it.
The so-called “debate” wasn’t even good political theatre. I only watched a bit of it before becoming bored and turning to a book.
I hung in there for the whole thing. This Palin candidacy exerts a morbid pull on me, like watching a gruesome accident in slow motion, or one of those ghastly medical programs.
JK, that link pointed out something I had neglected to: Palin’s announcing that she was going to ignore the questions and just stick to her prepared material, which was a pretty brazen move.
It was when that “brazen move” went unchallenged that I became bored with the farcical pseudo-debate and checked out. If slingling slogans and/or mud is what passes for political discourse in the U S of A, we deserve what we’re getting.
Bob, Malcolm, (gosh darn it I don’t knw whomehr to address whover first but):
It was a brazen move. Onlu a “Hookie Mom ” would jhave had the Inuit kinda stuff in her to have pulleed that off. As I mentioned, I was in Accounting class-learning how to do Jeff Skiiling kinda stuff when my glasses glazed over.
Can we just talk about Afghanixtan for a mintue?
Okey dokey.
Whateve it was you said Bob, and I give your credit for it, after all your son is in Iraq, I think the pipeline I pushed through Canada-because I theatered them (the Canadians gosh darn it) I give you credit for that.
Can I have the nooklur codes now?
I’d correct my spilling bit I gotta get my ked to ho9ky practice.
You try, gosh darn. Where was you when I was on TV?