Let's be up front: Nobody was listening to Sen. Joe Biden in the vice presidential debate last night.
It was the Sarah Palin show. And -- if you could cut away from all the "darns" and "gees," and trips to the soccer field -- the woman who looked way out of her league with Charlie Gibson and totally feckless with Katie Couric stood her ground on national television.
On domestic issues, Palin was totally at home. Her answer to moderator Gwen Ifill's question about gay rights went to Palin first and she hit it out of the park: After observing her own lack of prejudice, she offered a pitch-perfect response, saying she doesn't have any problem with civil benefits, but that marriage is between a man and a woman.
It probably made a whole crew of armchair philosophers spit out their cognac. But it was dead on for middle America.
On foreign policy, Biden stood out. A lifetime in foreign policy will do that for you. Unfortunately, in the high-stakes game of expectations it was a victory that Palin even stood up. She even managed to pronounce the president of Iran's name, Ahmadinejad, a bit better than either McCain or Biden.
Yet, it's still tough to get over the shout-out to her brother's elementary school. Somewhere between "Say it ain't so, Joe; now there you go again;" and "Now doggonit" we drowned under a sea of "darns" and couldn't help but squirm under the awkward "respect" she kept paying to Biden.
So the Governor of Alaska didn't get snowed under Thursday night. But on at least one item, Palin didn't persuade. Her repeated attempts to talk about "change," and rebuffs of Biden for talking about the past are a pathetic grab at Democratic talking points.
As Biden succinctly put it: "The past is prologue, Gwen." You might be interested in...
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