Yup, that’s me. I got it wrong again. Turns out the Veeps looked more presidential to me than either of the heads of their respective ticket. Yeesh.
Of course there was Biden, the foreign policy hand of his ticket, getting his math on Afghanistan wrong. Not that I had the numbers with me, but when Biden let this one out, I immediately said, “You know, that doesn’t sound right, and if he’s wrong, he’s gonna get nailed on that.” Welp, he was wrong.
3 weeks of Iraq – $6.3 billion
7 years of Afghanistan - $150.5 billion
(UPDATE: More on Joe’s ignorance of Lebanon. And Joe being wrong on Gaza and the West Bank.)
He also doesn’t seem to have nearly as firm a grasp on the Constitution as he appeared to have during the debate. To answer Gov. Palin’s famous question, “What does a VP do?” Ace responds, “Under the Constitution, the VP only has two things to do: break ties in the Senate and wait for the President to die.” More information on Ace’s blog, but essentially almost nothing Biden laid out concerning the VP in the Constitution was correct.
I think the best thing that could’ve happened with the moderator, Gwen Ifill, was the news coming out so close to the debate that she has a book about the historic nature of Obama coming out on inauguration day. I think it forced her to be fairly even handed. She was just as tough on Biden as she was on Palin, and certainly didn’t produce the kind of underwhelming questions that her colleague did the week previous. One thing of note: she didn’t ask any questions on energy, which was odd. Not to worry, Gov. Palin took it upon herself to answer one (or several) anyway.
I think Palin did much better than most people expected, given the public perception of her based on several poor interviews. I have a tiny little conspiracy theory about that. Can I share? I know it sounds ridiculous, but McCain is known for enjoying the fun of tactics, maneuvers, and outflanking professional observers. Do you think there’s a chance that the campaign intentionally set her up to appear less than impressive before the debate? I dunno. Just a thought. (UPDATE: Justin Hart at Culture 11 seems to share my conspiratorial thought: “She basically had to show up and not get sick on camera.”)
Biden did fairly well, in my opinion. None of his toes tickled the back of his throat once all night. For Anchor Joe to come off a debate with nary more than a couple stutters is a miracle. Maybe a miracle of modern medicine, even. Brokaw’s pre-debate analysis: Joe needs to be succinct. “And for Joe Biden to be succinct, he may have had to undergo a gene transplant today.”
Who won? Oh, that depends so much on the rubric you use to determine a debate winner. The Governor is still a Rorschach test. Few that hated her before have changed their minds. It’s all in the undecideds; strategically, that’s really the only demographic either campaign should care about now. Just like with the first post-debate polls, the results are all over the place. Here’s one from Frank Luntz’s focus group:
I think the real winner will be whoever gets a sizable boost in the polls after this. I was impressed enough with Palin’s performance, but ultimately, all that matters is the results of the election come November 4th. Every little thing up to that is merely a chess move.
A more important question is…
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