Gosh Darn, There She Goes Again!

Consider this.  Imagine there’s a man (or woman; take your pick, doesn’t matter) who is known for being clumsy.  Almost everyone has seen him trip up or drop something or otherwise make a spectacle of himself so that people at least laugh behind their hands if they don’t actually guffaw. Okay, so this clumsy man is faced with the task of walking in a reasonably straight line for a hundred yards without falling flat on his face or dropping anything.  And, what’s more, though he does stagger a number of times and does deviate from the marked route, he does complete the hundred yards while remaining more or less upright.  Do we say “Not bad.” or do we go into positive convulsions of glee, declaiming to one and all that we want this man to walk at the head of our parade?

America was faced with that choice after the first and only Vice Presidential debate on TV last Thursday evening.  Yes, I know that was days ago and many of you have posted about it already but since I had to forego “The Office”  “Kitchen Nightmares”  and “ER” in order that they could show the debate, I thought I had to say something.

First of all, I have to award full marks to whoever coached Sarah Palin in the run up to the debate.  She was very good at looking straight into the camera and reciting the set pieces she had been told to commit to memory.  Once she got into one of these little spiels, she seemed unable to stop until she reached the end.  This does not lead to debate so much as an exchange of pre-packaged opinions.  Palin was quite good at that, though there were many places where Joe Biden should have called her our.  “We gotta clean up Wall Street.”  she said (a banal sound-bite that sounds good but doesn’t have any actual substance, as if she had said “We gotta bring peace to the whole world.”  or  “We gotta cure all known diseases.”), and I was longing for Biden to interject with “How?” but of course it wasn’t that kind of debate.  That would be too much to hope for.

As the encounter between the candidates became less declamatory and more conversational, we saw Palin more and more out of her depth.  She several times simply ignored a question and talked about something else.  There may be some people who think this is clever – but it isn’t.  However, she got away with it.  She was very, very fortunate in the way the whole thing was moderated.  Worthy though Gwen Ifill may be, she almost need not have been there, as she let the candidates, especially Palin, walk all over her.   It is part of the moderator’s job to keep the debate on track, and she should have done so. She would have been perfectly within her rights to tell Palin that unilaterally deciding to ignore a question was not acceptable.  I have heard it said that if she had done that everyone would have felt sorry for Palin.  Excuse me?  Felt sorry for someone being called out for cheating?

Let me refer you to this video clip, which is just over two minutes long.  This is the link.  It is an excerpt from the debate between the three main candidates for the post of Mayor of London earlier this year.  The issue that has arisen is the cost of a new fleet of buses.  Watch how the moderator, Jeremy Paxman, keeps control of the candidates and makes sure that they don’t dodge the question. That is how it should be done. The moderator in any political debate is there to represent the voters.  He or she can not let the candidates get away with anything.  Or at least that’s how it should be. Gwen Ifill was little more than a master (mistress?) of ceremonies.

That of course suited the candidates very well.  Biden appeared several times as heavy handed, and in my not very humble opinion he emphasised his admiration for John McCain far too often.  One quick reference would have been enough.  I do think he showed remarkable patience when Palin demonstrated that she is still not clear on what it is that the Vice President does.  She seemed to think she will be presiding over the Senate.  Almost with weary resignation, Biden explained that the VP is there to use his (or maybe her) casting vote in the event of a tie.

Towards the end, though, the folksy down home crapometer was almost spinning off the dial.  She had made several references to what she used to do when she was mayor of Pissbucket, Alaska and had tried to apply them to questions that would arise after she is elected VP.  This got pretty tedious after a while.  So too did the winking and small town exclamations. Gosh darn, talking like that doesn’t make you suitable for the second most important elective office in the land.  Does vacuous down-home crap win elections?  I do hope not.

I also got sick of her overuse of the word maverick.  It seems that John McCain is one (Biden produced a statistic or two to showed that McCain isn’t much of a maverick on the most important issues but since Palin had not been pre-programmed to respond to that she simply ignored him) and Palin says she is one too.  Maybe being a maverick will end up a precondition for being a Republican candidate, and anyone who does not fit in with the rest of the mavericks will never get nominated. 

Since Thursday night we have seen many people, including those who should know better, saying how well Palin did. Well, the bar was set so low for her, after her recent catastrophic TV interviews, so that almost anything would be an improvement.  I don’t think that simply not making a total idiot of herself is a reason to congratulate her.  She still showed herself as being unfit for office, and that if she ever does suddenly become president she will be in right over her head. Notwithstanding the admirers who think that she succeeded last Thursday night, there must be people in the Republican Party organization who are wondering when a maverick becomes a loose cannon.
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Comments

[Rasmenia]

At first, reading this caused my imagination to run away with me a bit...picturing Palin & some of her fellow mavericks attending a seminar on public speaking led by George W. Bush, spouting out sentence fragments about nothing.

I started to giggle, but then stopped abruptly when I remembered that a terrifying amount of people are going to vote for McCain.

Very worrying, indeed.

[J]

It's distressing how cowed we are by this woman. Seems like both Ifill and Biden were on their best behavior, working to not appear to be biased or mean or anything like that.

This would not happen if she were a man, so it is sexism at its worst. It also would not happen if she were Hillary Clinton, because Clinton isn't an idiot, and the Republicans don't care about looking mean. They *are* mean.

Very, very frustrating indeed.

[Jennymcb]

Check out the video for Meet the Press, Gwen talks about the debate and why she did not follow up. Basically, Sarah said that she wasn't going to debate.

Personally, that ticket scares the crap out of me.

[marina]

Hi! I've added you to my list of blogger friends!
Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
http://muchacostarica.com/blog/2008/10/18/new-friends-of-a-new-blogger.aspx