Palin and the debate
Ronald Reagan used to give the media fits. "He is so stupid," they thought. "How can people like him?" But Reagan connected with people on the big issues and was comfortable with himself.
I admit I am a fan of Sarah Palin. I know my bias. I found her presence refreshing in the same way I enjoyed Reagan's (and, yes, I understand that she is no Ronald Reagan). She was especially refreshing compared to Biden's glibness (in hindsight, Biden was also playing pretty fast and loose with some facts - here too).
I particularly enjoyed that frustrated smile that Biden kept flashing Gwen Ifill as Palin held forth on her topics. It was almost as if Biden was saying: "She can't do this, Gwen. . .Gwen. . .Gwen, can she do this?"
She was pretty damn successful at changing the playing field on a number of key issues, including energy policy, tax policy and Iraq. She outright rejected some of the questions and used the opportunity to talk about what she wanted to talk about: "Since my answer was a pretty simply 'yes' or 'no,' I want to use my time to go back to energy policy" she said at one point. And she got away with it. Even if this irritated you, you have to give her marks for audacity.
Peggy Noonan noticed similar things during the debate:
"The whole debate was about Sarah Palin. She is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled—they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation."
Finally, from David Brooks (a recent Palin critic) at The New York Times:
"On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it. From her first “Nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?” she made it abundantly, unstoppably and relentlessly clear that she was not of Washington, did not admire Washington and knew little about Washington. She ran not only against Washington, but the whole East Coast, just to be safe.
To many ears, her accent, her colloquialisms and her constant invocations of the accoutrements of everyday life will seem cloying. But in the casual parts of the country, I suspect, it went down fine. In any case, that’s who Palin is."
Update: I particularly enjoy Power Line's hitting-with-men-on-base analogy.
I think you're right. Governor Palin has introduced a kitchen table conversational tone that, while perhaps not as sophisticated as the traditonal approach, strikes many of us as less contrived. I predict that we are going to see variations of this approach from candidates of both parties.
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Via Byron York:
“One of the reasons I feel so good for her, just as a human being,” said former Sen. Fred Thompson, “is I have never seen anybody undergo the ridicule, the slanders and the lies, and the blogosphere and what they’re doing, and breaking into her private e-mail, rumors and things about her, and now, most recently, belittling her, taking little snippets of interviews and laughing at her and satirizing her. Those people ought to be ashamed of themselves, if they’re capable of shame, because they’ve proven that what they were doing does not represent who she was and who she is. Thank goodness, just as she said, that this was an unfiltered event for an hour and a half. She could stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden, who’s been around for all these many, many years, and basically take him to the woodshed.”
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Very good point. I paraphrase Lou Holtz - It's not what they do to you, it's what you do with what they do to you.
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