Thursday, October 2, 2008

As Usual, I Was Correct

As I called it last night, the debate went pretty much as expected. Neither candidate did any major gaffes, and despite all of the right's preparation to call foul, Gwen Ifill did a very professional job and presented no discernible prejudice.

Biden came off as being very familiar with the issues and comfortable with his position and his candidate. He did have some minor goofs, like the "Bosniacs" bit, but overall a fairly strong performance, and definitely not anything that would hurt the Obama/Biden ticket.

Palin also did respectably well. She did not have the "deer in the headlights" moment that most people, liberal or conservative, were expecting. She did not come off quite as strong or comfortable as Biden. She kept shuffling her note cards like she was a card shark in a Vegas poker game. She also looked at them an awful lot, and most of her answers were fairly scripted. That was obvious because the only times she went off script is when she went into her Fargo accent.

She also seemed to have a difficult go at answering the questions at times. If she didn't have an answer, she would often revert to a previous question and give a scripted, rhetorical answer that had nothing to do with what was being asked.

Overall, I think that neither VP candidate did anything to hurt their respective tickets, but Palin did not come up with the strong responses she needed to if she were to sway many independent voters.

From a brief trip around the Cheddarsphere, most people were giving it a shrug and seemed disappointed that Palin, Biden, or even Ifill didn't commit a major faux pas. The more liberal bloggers saw through Palin's empty rhetoric, and the conservative bloggers were singing paeans just because she didn't immediately doom McCain's campaign even further.

We'll just have to see if McCain will let her off the short leash and actually start doing more than joint campaign stops and selected interviews.

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