Palin -- Like a Student Who Never Read the Book

Watching Sarah Palin try to debate Sen. Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate Thursday night (Oct. 2, 2008) must have had a familiar ring to a lot of teachers in the audience.

Wasn't it just like a student writing a review of a book she never read?

At least students try to be a little subtle about it. They don't usually note that they don't want to answer the question that the teacher asked and then try to fake it. They know that's a failing grade right off the bat. They usually just try to fake it by writing about something they do know something about and hope their phony rhetoric will carry the day.

Palin didn't even give the moderator, Gwen Ifill, that courtesy. Several times she flat out said she wouldn't answer the question and instead trotted out the lines she memorized the last few days alongside the creek in Sedona. Ifill was way too tolerant of that kind of behavior. She would have been within her rights to press a little harder for an answer since Palin did agree to the debate format, which entailed answering questions from a moderator.

I never thought Palin would fall totally flat, but the question remains why she did not. The questions in a debate are fairly predictable -- Iraq, Iran, the economy, health care. Palin could be prepped for those. Interviews are a little harder to prep for. No one thought Palin would be asked such tough questions as what newspapers do you read, what Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with, and so on. No one thought to prep her for those.

No one thought they had to, either.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden performed not like a student giving a review of a book he had actually read. He performed more like the guy who wrote the book.

He was a class act from start to finish, not condescending, just knowledgeable, mostly ignoring Palin and going after John McCain's record and policies.

Joe Biden will be an outstanding vice president.

How to Watch Tonight's VP Debate

Watching the vice presidential debate tonight (Oct. 2, 2008) between Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, and Republican Sarah Palin takes a little preparation, almost as much as watching your favorite game on the weekend.

First of all, you need to watch the debate with friends -- like fellow Obama-Biden supporters at Memories Lounge (1840 S. Old U.S. 23, Brighton). Supporters will gather there beginning around 7 p.m. and will be invited to make calls to undecided voters.

Then, you need to know what to watch for. We already know that Joe Biden will do a great job. Expectations for Palin range from the McCain spin (if she shows up with a pulse and speaks in complete sentences most of the time, she wins) to the Obama camp's belief that she will do as well as she did in her gubernatorial debates in Alaska, which was pretty good according to the clips that are all over the Web.

There's no reason to think Palin won't do at least as well as she did in those gubernatorial sessions. She does, after all, have a college degree, experience as a broadcaster, and experience as a political speaker. And she has spent three solid days practicing by that creek in Sedona, Arizona.

Personally, I don't expect her to crash and burn. Instead, I expect that she will be glib, but general, filling her answers with a few phrases that she will repeat over and over. These will include "the surge is working," "country first," "maverick," and so on.

To a casual viewer, she will sound OK. But for voters look for a reason to support her, she will be short on specifics about our nation's challenges and how McCain will address them.

That's where she will fail and that's why McCain-Palin will come up short in November.