The Vice Presidential Debate

There were a few key moments in tonight's debate that I want to mention that really caught my eye. Any quotations are from the CNN transcript, which can be found here.

1. Ifill asked Palin about her statement that she wants to see an exit strategy to get her son out of Iraq. Palin responded with a convoluted, rambling answer basically saying that she and McCain do have a plan, and what Bush is doing now is working. Biden called her out and said "Gwen, with all due respect, I didn't hear a plan." He then spent two paragraphs concisely and directly laying out the Democratic plan for "responsible withdrawal" from Iraq and why it's superior to the McCain plan. When Palin was asked to respond, she stared blankly into the distance for several seconds, before coming up with this fabulously original response: "Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure." I could often see the charm in her vaunted "folksy" demeanor at times tonight, but at that moment, I could have sworn that she was about to stick out her tongue at him. She was grasping at straws, and she spent half her response trying to regain her footing (which she did). Biden could have easily been perceived as repetitive, and he could definitely have bored a lot of viewers with his actual knowledge of policy and awareness of specifics of voting histories, but he was never caught off-guard like that.
   
   
2. Palin backed herself into a corner with her pseudo-centrist conciliatory bullshit overtures to the Log Cabin Republicans. She started talking about how she didn't support gay marriage, but she didn't have anything against gays. Biden came back with a brilliant response about how he didn't favor redefining the traditional heterosexual concept of marriage, but made it clear that the definition of "marriage" isn't something that the government has any interest in: what the government has a say in is the civil rights granted to citizens regardless of sexual orientation. He knew that he was saying exactly what he had to say, and went into it completely confident, which led to a particularly funny exchange and yet another horrified look on Sarah Palin's face when she was forced to admit that she had just agreed with Joe Biden on gay rights.
   

   IFILL: Let's try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

   BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

   The bottom line though is, and I'm glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that's the case, we really don't have a difference.

   IFILL: Is that what your said?

   PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.

   IFILL: Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let's move to foreign policy.

   
   
3. Palin's third moose-in-headlights moment came when she talked about the wonder of using vice presidential power to its utmost, and then had that horrible realization shortly afterwards when she realized that she had just put herself in the same camp with Dick "Keyser Söze" Cheney, who everyone hates, and put the apple on her head for Biden to start shooting at.
   

   PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

   IFILL: Vice President Cheney's interpretation of the vice presidency?

   BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

   And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

   The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

   
   

Other thoughts:

• Barack Obama's campaign made a huge mistake in letting Gwen Ifill moderate this debate. They had to have known she was writing a book about Obama, and that as a result, the conservative media would jump all over any perceived imbalance. And there were some issues where Biden and Palin were going back and forth, and Biden just happened to have the last word on the matter and it sounded like the book slamming shut on the issue. Ifill cut Palin off when she was about to (inexplicably) start talking about McCain's increased regulation on campaign finance reform (which he has oh-so-recently tried to undo for his own benefit), she let Biden finish the health care discussion on his "bridge to nowhere" joke, the aforementioned Keyser Söze article of the constitution, and (my favorite) going on a rampage against this common misconception that John McCain is a maverick. These things will not go unnoticed.
  
  
• From Anna: "More or less a draw, if only because she refused to debate on conventional terms. He could've hit her a lot harder... not literally.
  
  
• From Wyl: "I'll never be able to watch Fargo again. She was more folksy than The News from Lake Wobegon, but she comes off twice as fake... Biden handled himself as well as he could, considering he was debating with both hands - and more importantly, his mouth - tied behind his back. Sexism is a touchy subject, but I think people have to take a step back after tonight and say we need to engage that subject in a direct way, because tonight it was pretty clear Biden had to play it safe lest it seem he was picking on her. And that's just as unfair to him as it would be to a woman if he did portray her as weak because of her genitalia."