The Undercard

At their vice-presidential debate last week, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin weren't much better than their running mates in terms of answering direct questions or going beyond vague platitudes. But they did make for a far more entertaining show. And without question, Palin was the star.

After rousing the conservative base with her down-home charm and borderline MILF-iness at the Republican convention, Palin entered a month-long media blackout, stepping out into the light only twice and getting burned both times. Her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric exposed her ignorance on a wide range of issues - or at least an inability to think on her feet (how could she not have been able to name even one magazine? Surely she's got a few copies of this one lying around the house). She'd gone from potential saviour of the McCain campaign to national joke in a few short weeks, and the widespread expectation was that Biden would slaughter and field-dress her, Alaskan moose-style, on the debate stage. The prospect of a rhetorical turkey shoot lent some intrigue to the confrontation.

By any rational measure, Biden did crush Palin. He came closer than she did to actually answering the questions, flaunted the breadth and depth of his knowledge and shrewdly avoided the temptation to condescend to his under-qualified opponent. Palin, on the other hand, gave a virtuoso lesson on how to stick to memorized script regardless of the question being posed. I especially liked when she used the fact that she'd only been on the ticket for five weeks to dodge a question about promises that might have to be rescinded.

What she didn't do is cry, or wet her pants, or stare blankly at the screen for minutes at a time. Which, after her Gibson and Couric interviews, seemed to be what people were expecting. The bar for her was set so low that it would have been more difficult to limbo under it than hop over it, and hop over she did. This is, after all, a poised and confident woman with a strong belief in her (misguided) convictions. She was never going to cower. 

In that sense, it was a victory for her. But while she might have avoided personal embarrassment, it's not like she did a lot to re-energize the McCain campaign. She clearly lacked Biden's intellectual heft and curiosity, and her performance reinforced her status as a neophyte on the national political stage. In other words, I don't think she made anyone feel any better about her as America's potential second-in-command.