Palin the P-O-T-A-T-O-E Speller or Palin the Debater Tonight?

Though this past week of Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin presented the portrait of a LensCrafter Barbie more likely to be elected Mrs. South Carolina (errr Alaska) than Vice President, don't expect the same cracks in her brittle, ill-informed, and incurious mind to be on display tonight. She will (appear to) be a different woman.



The differences in formats and purposes between a network interview and presidential debate will necessarily yield different results.



Many in my camp are privately hoping for a Dan Quayle-ish performance from the Alaskan Governor. Publicly they are spinning Palin debate performance expectations upward should she somehow exceed the low expectations the public and media have set for her. I would remind my wishful friends and you, that when it came time to debate, Dan Quayle (the debater) was no Dan Quayle (the potatoe speller).

He held his own. One need only watch the following 1992 vice presidential debate footage between the intellectually gifted Al Gore and the intellectually impoverished Quayle to understand:



Tonight, the difference between Palin the Potatoe Speller and Palin debator will be equally stark. You will see the illusion of competence evident in the Palin Gubernatorial debates of 2006 on display here tonight, not the fumbling, unsure interviewee of the past week or so.

The apparent dramatic shift in competence is an illusion (like making a horse look like it can count) borne of the different task specific demands of being interviewed and those of debating. In the interview, where one interviewer probes one interviewee, there are an almost infinite number of possible questions that might be posed, and any non-answers will almost certainly be followed up upon by a competent interviewer(see Charlie Gibson).

In a debate the questions are generally limited in scope to current events and policy positions. Time for answering the questions is strictly limited, and the moderator's ability to chase down an evasive answer is nullified by debate duration time concerns.

Additionally, in preparation for the debate, each of the candidates will, in the course of preparing for the debate, have memorized several "on message" responses to be given in the event of a knowledge or willingness gap.

Charlie Gibson was able to toss Palin a question about the Bush Doctrine that threw her embarrassingly off, and had the time to press her into a painfully revealing corner. If she were to have been asked the same question in a debate by a moderator she would have replied:

"John McCain and I are well aware of what's laid out by the Bush Doctrine, but I think the American people are less concerned in these troubled economic times with any policy of the previous administration, and more with finding ways shoring up our failing economy and fixing the dysfunction and special interest infected Washington system that has landed us in this mess. The want maverick change...and thats what they would get in a McCain-Palin administration...maverick change."

The above answer could easily but modified to be used if faced with a question about Alan Greenspan's policies or those of the Clinton Administration's Robert Rubin, and in each case Palin would appear to be reasonably bringing the conversation back to the crisis facing the American people today and rather than avoiding the question asked.

That, my friends, is how you make a fool seem a genius, and a potatoe speller a debater.


******POST DEBATE UPDATE**********
Did you notice how fervently Palin was shuffling through her note cards during the debate, barely lifting her head during each of Biden's responses? She was madly looking for prepackaged responses provided beforehand by McCain advisers, one answer per card.

The Advisors (who, incidentally, also wrote her well practiced one liners) tried to anticipate all possible questions, but not being psychics, couldn't. The times Palin refused to answer the asked questions were the times she either had no prewritten response or couldn't find it amongst the hundred or so cards she had to shuffle through to find it.

This should make you smile (laugh aloud?) next time someone points out how bold Palin was in refusing to answer the questions Gwen Ifill (the moderator) asked in order to talk directly to the American people. She wasn't bold...she was desperate.

Did she meet the low expectations set by the media and her republican handlers? Ya'Betcha (Wink)! Would she have been able to answer any of the questions without her raft of notecards? Nopester...she woulda been refusing questions all night long in order to speak directly to the American People (that bold babe!).

Was it a success?...."In what respect, Charlie?"



Politigal1

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