“She seemed to be having fun, and showed an effortless mastery of foreign policy details,”

You’ve got to be kidding. She spent the whole time reciting barely memorized talking points and checking her note cards.

She appeared to be quite innocent of the facts in many instances, although she tried to spin this to her advantage by implying that any reference to facts was dwelling in the past.

She likes the word “also” and uses it as a kind of verbal tick, often to connect two unrelated ideas.

Both candidates did well. Because it was shocking that Palin did well she is the clear winner. I did think that her refusal to answer questions by retreating to energy policy (which hadn’t been asked about yet) was a clear dodge, but Gwen only pushed her once on the dodges and gave her a pass after that. Thus the dodges were less damaging than they could have been.

Perhaps Katie Couric has some sort of special Palin kryptonite that causes the governor to become a blathering idiot. In any case the woman on the stage tonight was not the bozo we’ve seen in the interviews. It will be interesting to see if this impacts the polls at all. I think that the shine has already come off the apple as far as Palin is concerned, but this should reassure conservative intellectuals that have spent the last week in a full out panic.

In any case, Palin was pretty consistently confident, capable of speaking in not only complete sentences but actual paragraphs, and responded directly to nearly all questions that were asked of her. She certainly looked like she belonged on the stage tonight. I’m surprised and frankly disappointed. I was hoping for a spectacle (both sides had potential) and I didn’t get it from either candidate. I want my money back!

I believe one of the lines Biden repeated was about military spending in Iraq vs Afghanistan, saying that we spend more in 3 weeks in Iraq than we do in Afghanistan. I think it is a compelling enough point to bear repeating.

Bill: She spent the whole time reciting barely memorized talking points and checking her note cards

Regarding “barely memorized talking points”: This is different from Biden, how?

Regarding note cards: There were no note cards allowed in the debate.

I’ll put it this way: The media said that Obama won the 1st debate, because he exceeded expectations. Not only did Obama have higher expectations than Palin, but he didn’t exceed his expectations by as much as Palin exceeded hers.

Palin was supposed to end the McCain campaign tonight by making some terrible gaffe that would get played and replayed by the media for the next 4 weeks. “Barely memorized talking points” seems to be the most negative thing that you can come up with. Sounds to me like Palin hit a home run.

Steve M, don’t sweat the typos. This is just a blog. Tell people classless enough to attempt to correct you that you may have an opening soon in your entourage for an editor, and you think they’d make a great candidate and you’d love to see their resume.

DKL said: “Barely memorized talking points” seems to be the most negative thing that you can come up with. Sounds to me like Palin hit a home run.

In that sense, I think she did hit a home run. McCain and Palin have had masterful preparation for these debates and have had control. Obama and Biden have been on their heels, spending much of their time defending their records, and not very convincingly.

The thing that absolutely blew my mind was Biden’s use of the term “winning hearts and minds” in Afghanistan, as well as other Bush phrases. I swear Obama/Biden sound a lot like the Bush administration lately.

And Palin effectively takes Main Street away from the Obama/Biden platform with her folksy speak. I think her authenticity in the debate did a lot for her. That and her grasp of the effects of Obama’s tax plan on Main Street.

I was very impressed by how much she stuck with what she knew and stated quite clearly that those were the reasons she was selected as McCain’s VP and that’s what she would be engaged in as VP. Biden was a little vague on that.

I was impressed with Biden, as well. I have to admit, I have been completely turned off to the guy up until now. He was impressive to me in that he had a clear grasp of his and Obama’s records, which he spent a lot of time defending; and he was respectful, but also very firm in his points and policy. His talking about education was rather hypocritical (kids in exclusive private schools) and his talk about his Main Street roots was unconvincing, at best. Palin could simply show up and trump those topics. All in all, I think he did well, but was not superior.

Ultimately, I think that these debates have shown me that the two campaigns talk a lot about the same things, but McCain/Palin have been able to speak better on the predominant themes without the teleprompter.

I’m re-watching the debate, this time in HD. Biden is wrong so frequently it’s painful. He only appears smart if you’re an idiot or a brainwashed Democrat who’ll brook no criticism of the Democratic ticket. If Palin made this many misstatements, she’d be crucified (claiming that George W. Bush is to blame for the fact that Hezbollah has been in Lebanon since 1980s, proposing that NATO — composed primarily of anti-Semitic nations — would go along with being in Lebanon).

It’s nice to see that the debate has increasingly ceased to be about political issues or even Palin’s qualifications, and now they’re just about how detestable the phrases she chooses and her accent. There’s informed voting for ya!

Well DKL, I thought Palin sounded like a stuttering immature blowhard who covered her lack of substantive dialog with barely coherent talking points. She only appears smart if your a n idiot or a brain dead republican. Biden stuck to his party line and didn’t overshadow Obama, which is appropriate. She didn’t go down in flames, which was being drooled over by many on the left, so that’s one for her.

I’m really disturbed by her expansion of Cheney’s ideas about the role of the VP in legislative action. She needs to explain that better, if there is a defensible explanation.

“the question about at what point nukes should be used.”

I don’t think Biden answered this either, did he?

And Obama and McCain both dodged plenty of questions in their debate.

Fact Check’s
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/check-point-the-vice-presidential-debate/
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/?hpid=topnews?hpid=topnews

Katie M (#13),

The reason Biden can’t attack Palin on the Bridge to Nowhere is that he consistently supported it in the Senate. CNN.com the other day ran a story that both he and Obama rejected an amendment to the bill funding the Bridge to Nowhere that would have diverted the funds to repairing infrastructure that had been damaged by Katrina. True she first wanted the Bridge, but she wasn’t in a position to actually fund it. Biden and Obama were both in the position to either fund it or kill it, and both chose to fund it.

She did address the nuclear attack position by stating the real need was preventing it from happening, which is the right thing to say and what Biden basically said too.

I thought Palin didn’t embarrass herself nearly as much as she might have (thinking of the Couric debate). I’ll bet if you took a poll in Utah they would say she won handily just as DKL thoght. (Heck, the way she pronounces “feel” as “fill” must have made a lot of people feel a certain affinity to her there alone. Not to mention it is the reddest of red states already…)

Biden clearly “won” the debate for most of us though. He seemed to actually know what he was talking about and had a quiet confidence that worked quite well I thought.

btw I’m still waiting for SNL to do a parody of any sort about Biden. I suspect it will be crickets again this Saturday…

DKL: You’ve been as fair as possible with the other posts in this “series,” but not this one. Palin came across far better than I expected (as did Biden, albeit for different reasons), but what I expected was a repeat of the Couric interview. Palin often looked uncomfortable, and at least once gave a deer-in-the-headlights look.

And I think everyone agrees that Biden was holding back, directing his attacks at McCain and not Palin. When he did attack her, it was indirect, as in linking her to Cheney. In contrast, Palin’s attacks were frequently directed right at Biden. Since the debate was really a draw, it leaves one to wonder how Palin would have fared if Biden had directly attacked her. (At least one time he tossed a rebuttal in her lap, she juggled the topic like a hot potato and then awkwardly switched subjects.)

Still, I can totally agree with you on this: “But you can not plausibly use this debate as an argument that Palin isn’t qualified.”

I also agree with you on Palin’s most memorable strong moment. That was golden (but only because Biden didn’t counter as Katie M suggested above).

Biden’s best moment: when he took a strong swipe at McCain’s “Maverick-ness.” By that point in the night, everyone was tired of hearing the word “mav’rick,” so the time was right to make an attack. Paraphrasing, “McCain is not a maverick in any of the areas that actually matter to voters.”

Biden also did a good job coming across as a nice, hard-working guy. When he talked about his family’s (growing up) financial struggles, when he talked about losing his wife and child, when he talked about being a single parent—surely that stole some of the “stay-at-home-mom thunder” away from Palin. Maybe not.

I absolutely didn’t even watch it. Partly because I’ve been sick and I forgot until it was about halfway over, and at that point I was more interested in watching Utah beat Oregon State.

I’ve hit the point of the campaign where I just don’t care anymore. I’m voting McCain and my state is voting McCain. I don’t think I’d change my vote even if Palin sprouted horns and revealed herself to be the evil twin sister of Pat Buchanan or Mike Huckabee.

When the bar is set so very low that all you have to do is avoid knocking it off in order to claim a victory, it is hardly a ‘win’.Refusing to answer specific questions set and rambling around spouting memorised answers hardly constitutes a ‘debate’. And all the folksy stuff- yuk. If America wants a Presidency which talks down to them and categorises all Americans as ‘joe six packs’ or ‘hockey moms’, then go for it. The rest of the world would prefer a little more context, please.

A thing that interested me was Biden’s attempts to identify himself with the middle class by uttering “Scranton” in every sentence he could jam it into. It seemed dishonest and pathetic for a man who has been a Senator most of his life to go on and on about some place he had lived as a boy. I felt a little more compassion for him, though, when he finally addressed that very point, and recognized that his job in the Senate has been very good to him, yet that wasn’t the life he had growing up.

I grew up in a lower-middle class family that in my first decade was really just lower class. That’s not at all the life I live now, however, and it’s not the life of my children. That’s a common enough situation in a country with so much economic mobility, yet it leaves some of us a little confused about who we are at times. Now I feel like renting “Breaking Away.”

DKL–I think we were watching different debates. I agree that this debate is not going to change any minds–conservatives will think Palin did well (because it was not a total disaster) and liberals will think Biden did well (because it was not a total disaster.

Biden basically gave Palin a pass. He was significantly restrained and might as well have been debating from his couch with a bag of potato chips. The only time he really got animated was at the VP question where Palin answered that she was really looking forward to Presiding over the Senate. Biden used this as a chance to talk about Cheney’s extremely questionable conduct, but he could easily have gone after Palin’s understanding of the U.S. Constitution (which I would have LOVED to have seen–I really wonder if she has read it–she certainly did not list it with other publications she reads on a regular basis :) ).

More often than not, she answered her own question, not the ones, or even the topics, asked. I realize people will say that politicians do this all the time. Perhaps her delivery was just more clumsy (she often asked for permission to ignore the question), but it seemed much more that she simply didn’t have any overlapping knowledge, so had to change the subject more radically. If this debate were a Venn Diagram, Gwen’s questions and Palin’s answers had a very small overlap while Biden’s answers and Gwen’ quetions had significant overlap.

(Perhaps for the first time ever ;) ) Sarahcuda and I agree that Palin benefited significantly from a lack of follow-up from moderator Gwen I. I suspect (don’t know Gwen well, so maybe it was her style) that Palin is the beneficery of the conservative-manufactured flap this week over the neutrality of Gwen as moderator (there were accusations that she could not be neutral). I think Gwen’s only defense against Palin’s refusal to answer questions was to ask her the questions FIRST much more often than Biden got the questions first (because Biden’s answers inevitably gave Palin a tangent to answer about). Had the moderator followed up, I am sure we would have heard about “attacks” on Palin.

If note cards were not allowed (I believe you, I had just also thought she had something she was playing with), I would love to know what Palin was doing with her hands–it was distracting.

I think she has proven herself qualified to be a photo-op kind of VP. Not something that I, personally, am interested in, but hey, that is what my vote is for.

My favorite part was a classic Biden moment –

After Palin said she agreed with VP Cheney that the Vice President is a constitutional officer of the legislative branch (and then used the rest of her time to talk about something else) Biden pontificates about how he disagrees.

He makes himself sound all authoritative and knowledgeable by referencing Article I of the Constitution (which does, in fact say the Vice President is the President of the Senate) but he then says that Article I defines the Executive Branch and states that as a result the Vice President is an executive officer. Article I doesn’t define the executive branch. Article I defines the legislative branch. Article II defines the executive branch. For someone who holds himself out as such a brilliant constitutional scholar, this was a gigantic gaffe. It might be good if the democrats actually read the constitution for once rather than making stuff up.

If Palin had made that mistake the media would have jumped all over it.

ESO (#36)

“If note cards were not allowed (I believe you, I had just also thought she had something she was playing with), I would love to know what Palin was doing with her hands–it was distracting.”

They have pads of paper that they can take notes on. She probably jotted down a few thoughts while Biden was speaking.

“so many liberals did everything they could to set the expectations very low for Palin”–it seems they did her a huge favor, then.

Agreed that this debate was good for her and those who want to/are reluctantly supporting her ticket.

If you’ve ever been to real debates (like high school or college) where 1) the observer doesn’t have a horse in the race, 2) where the debaters debate both sides and 3) the debaters have to actually stick to the resolutions, directly answer questions and cross-examine their opponents, then you’d A) realize that these are infomercials, not debates, B) base your opinion on the outcome on the substance of the arguments rather than some phony game of expectations. Debate judges don’t consider how crappy a debater is going into the debate, they judge them solely on the arguments.

Now, all that being said, I know that there is no way in hell that the American public is going to view this “debate” that way. They are going to do exactly what DKL did, and that is watch it with all of their political bias and baggage, judging the outcome based on whether or not they agreed with the debater, not on the substance or persuasiveness of their argument. In other words, DKL knew Palin would win before it even started because he agrees with her positions, not because she was or wasn’t persuasive.

Palin struggled at the beginning, but improved over the course of the debate. I wasn’t impressed with her strident: I’m going to talk about me and my track record, no matter what questions you (Gwen Ifil) ask me.

With all due respect Gov. Palin, this a political debate, not an open opportunity for you to run down your resume without even attempting to first answer the questions. She refused to answer the question on bankruptcy, for example, about which Senator Biden provided substantive answers. All the pundits say Palin is fluent on energy issues, and maybe I missed something, but all I heard was that she’s for drilling in ANWAR, clean coal and caps on emissions. I guess this constitutes fluency when on all other issues she’s speaking an incomprehensible language.

Anyway, I like Sarah Palin! She reminds me of a much older version of my sister. Peppy, spunky, down to earth, not afraid to shake things up. But not much interest in delving down into the issues and developing expertise on things that aren’t directly relevant to her life.

My biggest fear is also my biggest consolation that if elected, Palin will be McCain’s “Yes” woman and increasingly irrelevant, because she has no political capital or currency of her own. This is fine if McCain lasts another five years – but I’m worried how effective Palin could be as a president. Probably no more or less effective than Pres. George Bush is right now.

The really exciting debates are typically the ones between vice presidential candidates, but these are the independent films of the political debate world: interesting but mostly unwatched.

I believe more watched this than the Presidential debate last week.

I’m not foaming at the mouth but disagree with her politics and even if I agreed with her politics I would think she is not up to the job or being VP and the prospect of her being president is frightening.

I don’t particularly want Biden to be president either, but I would sleep at night if he were.

Rusty has a good point, if this were a formal debate Biden wins, hands down. But the public is not a bunch of debate judges. I think that many find Palin appealing when she isn’t appalling.

Speaking of high school debate has anybody seen Rocket Science? It is a very strange film that starts off with you thinking it is going to be about overcoming and revenge in the world of high school debate and ends up being something very different.

Biden is wrong so frequently it’s painful. … If Palin made this many misstatements, she’d be crucified (claiming that George W. Bush is to blame for the fact that Hezbollah has been in Lebanon since 1980s, proposing that NATO — composed primarily of anti-Semitic nations — would go along with being in Lebanon).

DKL, if Biden was so obviously wrong so often, shouldn’t a halfway knowledgeable and competent debate opponent have pointed out some of these?

It should be noted that the snap polls of independent and undecided voters seem to support what most of the “foaming-at-the-mouth crowd” is saying in this thread. Namely that she exceeded (extremely low) expectations but Biden won. We’ll find out more in coming days–so far this doesn’t seem to be a game-changer.

Anne,

I look forward to the SNL spoof as well. I’m sure that Tina Fey will return with her very well done parody of Palin. It will be interesting to see how they spoof Biden (I don’t think they’ve ever done him before).

My guess is they’ll play on his flirtatiousness at the debate. I’d also like to see them parody his over-exaggeration (or lying depending on your perspective).

#46, I don’t remember Palin ever saying “I don’t care what questions you ask…” She said she may not answer how the moderator or her opponent wanted her to…big difference in what you are trying to claim…

Tim J.,

If Biden said that, it doesn’t really make any sense.

I do seem to recall a point at which the PLO was kicked out of Lebanon.

Tim (#55),

You got me.

I think he was trying to reference Syria getting kicked out of Lebanon. But, as we all know, it was the Lebanese who did that.

Same is true about 15 other utterances Biden made last night.

Sure he sounded authoritative. But just because you sound like you know what you’re talking about doesn’t mean you’re right. It reminded me of that old Steve Martin Saturday Night Live sketch where Martin plays the medieval doctor who comments about how far medical science has come. He says something like, “Why, just a few years ago we would have thought that your brother was possessed by evil spirits. But now, thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, we know that your brother simply has small gnomes running around in his stomach.”

Come on guys, this was not about who looked the best. It was about our thinking who can be VP. Palin answered like she was in one of her beauty contest. Biden answered like he was in a campaign for the VP. Palin (dropping her ‘Gs’), is just smoke and mirrors. She really think she in the running for President.

Amanda,

ECS is correct. When Palin decided that she didn’t want to answer a question she was pretty up front about it, acting as if being evasive was a virtue.

Rusty,

Since nobody gets to bring home a trophy, Palin won in the only sense that matters for now. I believe that on Nov 4 she will lose in the only sense that matters, so this victory will apply only to her future prospects and not this election.

I believe that both Palin and Biden won the debate.

Palin won in the sense that her performance made plausible that she might be able to serve as president. She is at least as competent and knowledgeable as GWB was in 2000. I believe that was her objective, and that she succeeded. I do not think she demonstrated that McCain would be a better president than Obama–but again, I do not think that was her goal.

On the other hand, I think that Biden won in the sense that he focussed on and made a successful case that Obama would make a better president than McCain. He did not make the case that Palin was unqualified, but I do not think that was his objective (and rightly so).

One of my good friends who is voting for McCain told me today that while he really, really likes Palin, he does not think she is qualified to be president. But, like many other Latter-day Saints I know, he is voting for McCain not because he thinks he will be a good president (or Palin a good vice president), but that he has a visceral opposition to Obama (of the sort that DKL points out that many have against Palin).

Rusty: If you’ve ever been to real debates (like high school or college)… [emphasis added]

This is both pedantic and incorrect. A debate is a structured forensic contest. The fact that there are teams that engage in structured forensic contests with different rules doesn’t change that, and last night’s debate was no less a “real debate” debate than the 19th century debates between Abe Lincoln and Steve Douglas.

Rusty: Now, all that being said, I know that there is no way in hell that the American public is going to view this “debate” that way.

The purpose of a political debate is to discuss topics surrounding policy issues in a way that causes the audience to identify with you. Polling questions about who “won” the debate actually prompt individuals to give surprisingly formal and disinterested evaluations, and they tend to tell pollsters that they’ll vote for the winner (a common problem with polls is that they find out what people think they should say rather than what they actually believe; cf., the Bradley Effect). For example, the 1988 debates between Dukakis and George H. W. Bush are recognized to have been something of a disaster for Dukakis, though a majority of viewers believed that Dukakis had “won.”

Rusty: In other words, DKL knew Palin would win before it even started because he agrees with her positions, not because she was or wasn’t persuasive.

This is a non sequitur. It’s equivalent to saying that I knew Palin would do great in the Couric interview before it even started, because I agreed with Palin’s positions.

Rusty: The public is not a bunch of debate judges but they (we) keep discussing “who won” the debate, which is essentially playing the part of debate judge. But you see, we’re not judging the debate on actual debate criteria, we’re judging it on irrelevant stuff like expectations. She might have won the public by not screwing up, but that doesn’t mean she won the actual debate.

You just can’t get anything right, can you? Pursuant to my previous answer where I refer to the Dukakis debate numbers, Americans actually take a very dispassionate view of who “won” the debate, it just doesn’t impact the way people vote the way that many analysts think it does.

I don’t use the word “won” in my original post, and when I use it in my comments, I refer to other people’s usages of it.

Palin did what she needed to do politically — and expectations are an inescapable part of politics and an inescapable part of political debates — and Biden didn’t do what he needed to do politically. Whether this is “winning” is a semantic question. But your discussion of “real” debates and judging them and winning them is altogether beside the point.

Furthermore, insisting that we import the formal criteria used in other, unrelated forensic contests is kind of strange. For example, your assertion that it’s somehow illegitimate for viewers to handicap the participants’ performances based on expectations is bizarre.

That said, it’s good to see you in these parts. I feel like you’re something of an old sparring partner, and I hope to see you more regularly.

#70: ” last night’s debate was no less a “real debate” debate than the 19th century debates between Abe Lincoln and Steve Douglas.” Say it isn’t so Joe!

Clark: I believe more watched this than the Presidential debate last week.

Yes. Immediately following the quotation from my 2004 column that you cite, I write, “…the rest of [the preceding citation] may not describe this vice presidential debate very well. It may well be well viewed…”

sister blah 2: DKL, if Biden was so obviously wrong so often, shouldn’t a halfway knowledgeable and competent debate opponent have pointed out some of these?

The purpose of a VP during the campaign cycle is to promote the top of one’s own ticket, and go after the top of the opposing ticket. When your campaign is dominated by discussions of your opponents’ VP or her opinions, you put yourself in a losing position. As a VP, one must be sparing in her direct criticisms of the other VP, so that she don’t lose focus on the presidential candidate — remember how hard Obama took it when he and Biden focused on Palin.

Bob: Biden answered like he was in a campaign for the VP.

He answered like he was campaigning to pretend to be VP. With the vast number of erroneous assertions, one might wonder if his true calling weren’t improvisation — except that he’s rather boring.

ECS, you’re right about Palin being up front. You cite the NYT/CNN transcript, and it’s worth noting that it’s inaccurate. It says,

And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

Her actual words were:

And I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m… [emphasis added]

With all the errors in the transcript (and I think that this one is not insignificant) one wonders whether Biden had a hand in it. On second thought, it’s highly unlikely. As error-ridden as it is, the transcript is way more accurate than Biden.

Just me,

I agree with your general point that mocking the lack of polish in a person’s speech patterns is unseemly. But for public figures, analysis of their speech patterns is fair game. And what some object to is that sometimes the colloquialisms, far from representing anything authentic, are often a fraudulent and condescending act.

For example, during the three years I lived in Alaska I never heard anyone speak as Palin did yesterday with “darn right,” “doggone it,” and other such informalities sprinkled so liberally throughout. It reminded me a lot of Bush’s fake cowboyspeak or of Hillary Clinton’s attempts to speak in a southern accent. Even Obama occasionally engages in this inauthentic folksiness.

An anecdote from the LDS community reported to me by my daughter, who is an Obama supporter like her old man. She has long enjoyed arguing with a very politically conservative friend in her university ward about politics. This friend, who was a staunch McCain-Palin supporter, told my daughter last night that after viewing the Couric interviews and last night’s debate, he could no longer support or vote for the McCain-Palin ticket. He, however, has the same visceral dislike of Obama that I perceive in many of my co-religionists, and cannot bring himself to support or vote for Obama-Biden. He said therefore that he will either vote for Nader or write in “Mickey Mouse.”

Thus, I must amend my prior comment to add that Nader and Mickey Mouse were additional winners of the VP debate. :) :)

Just me: I find Palin very condescending of others. Plus SHE is the one calling herself
“Joe Sixpack” and a country bumpkin.
#74: DKL- “..pretend to be VP..” He was not pretendin(g), he was practicin(g). Learn to
live with it..

Oh come now DKL. You are sounding more and more like a foam-at-the-mouth anti-Biden conservative all the time around here.

Rusty, you call the practice of handicapping debate performance using expectations as “phony.” Presumably, you think that it is not an “objective” measure, since you say that Palin lost by almost any objective measure. Both of these are incorrect.

But people did have expectations of how Palin would do. And these expectations can be objectively measured and quantified — i.e., the expectations are objective facts. Furthermore, people actually vote based on expectations. You can’t just dismiss expectations as though they are vaporous nonsense.

Furthermore, as I stated, the purpose of the political debate is to have discussions surrounding policy issues in a way that lead the audience to identify with you. This has very little to do with offering high-quality arguments or being persuasive. If Palin won the voters hearts, then she won the debate by this standard. And whether she won the voters hearts can be objectively measured.

It’s not clear to me what the basis of your assertion about “objective standards.” Best I can tell, you want to discount these factors because they are different from the (rather trivial) set of rules used in debates set up to facilitate the hobbies of amateur contestants who are not participating as part of a serious political campaign that presents voters real political choices.

(There is a tendency to treat political campaigning as somehow more trivial and less serious than other, more elevated activities. Sometimes, it is less serious — like when Biden blatantly misrepresents the Constitution to smear his political enemies. But just because men like Biden work to trivialize politics doesn’t mean that politics is inherently trivial. There are, thankfully, politicians like Palin who communicate great ideas and actually accomplish things in real life.)

Geoff J: Oh come now DKL. You are sounding more and more like a foam-at-the-mouth anti-Biden conservative all the time around here.

That’s a textbook example the ad hominem fallacy, an attempt to avoid make an argument by calling names.

By contrast, when I say that Biden is Constitutionally illiterate, that’s a conclusion that I’ve reached using an argument that I’ve laid out for all to see and to respond to. There’s absolutely nothing fallacious about arguing that somebody’s an idiot.

If you disagree with my arguments, then you should try advancing a counter-argument.

Come to think of it, Palin pronounced nuclear /nooclar/ instead of /nooklier/. No way an individual who would do that should aspire to a prestigious position.

#87: If you think Palin is more “Joe Sixpack” than Bidin, you need a review of their lives and ambitions.
#85: I don’t think McCain or Palin view themselves as running as Republicans.
DKL: Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Biden’s understanding of the job of VP is much greater than Palin’s.

#91: Who is real? Again, I think you have to look at their whole life(s). I am open to maybe Obama or Palin have created their image(s). I don’t think this of Bidin.

Palin has the thickest ‘Utawh’ accent, I think she’d do wonders enhancing the image of American refinement abroad! woo-hoo! go Sarah! She’s from Amerrican Fawrk, isn’t she?

#93: If your right, why would he pick that image (age 72, one house, one car, 40 years on a train?)
#94: My Dad said Amerrican Fawrk and was Joe Sixpack. I knew my Dad…Palin is not my Dad!
#95: Biden has been in the Senate ,what 36 years..I think he knows the rules and who runs/has run it.

Brett, have you been to Utah? That’s not a Utah accent, although I also wondered about it the other day. I thought it sounded New England-ish, but then I realized a lot of Canadians have that accent.

Bob. How old is he? I think it’s mathematically impossible for him to ridden a train for 40 years. Plus he’s too rich to ride a train. I bet he’s had a limo pick him up for a long, long time. I remember when his wife and daughter were killed and I felt really bad for him, but he’s using it. That’s what I’m talking about. He stopped being a common man a long, long time ago. McCain never was.

And you said it all when you said he knows the rules. He probably makes them, he’s an ultimate Washington insider and he can protest all he wants. I’m not sure who’s technically correct, but the VP is the president of the Senate, there must be more than some type of symbolic role or tie breaking vote.

Although, I don’t think Palin is right either. Maybe they’re both right.

#96: Here’s the relevant senate rule, which is in full conformity to the constitution:
http://rules.senate.gov/senaterules/rule01.php
The president pro tempore presides only in the absence of the vice president, and the presiding officer may appoint another senator to chair. The only other person to preside in the senate is the chief justice during a trial or presidential impeachment.

Biden claimed that the vice president only presides when casting a tiebreaking vote. That is contrary to both the constitution and senate rules. There’s nothing in the rules or the constitution that prevents the VP from banging the gavel any time he wants.

Even if Biden meant only that current *custom* is that the VP does not preside except to break a tie, he is still wrong. The VP does traditionally preside over the counting of electoral votes and sits in the presiding chair during the state of the union address.

The more Biden engages in this kind of practice, the less qualified he’ll be to serve.

DKL,

You and I both know that this makes no sense. Biden is already plenty qualified to serve as VP. There’s nothing he can do between now and Nov 4 to change that. As Palin supporters are fond of pointing out the only real qualifications that one needs to serve are those in the constitution (which is silent on the issue of giving factually incorrect answers to debate questions) and having your ticket win the election.

Given those facts, how can he disqualify himself?

annegb,

Clearly besides the constitutional requirements the primary qualifier for either the presidency or the vice presidency is that your ticket wins the election.

In other words the qualifications are whatever the voters want them to be.

#98:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-fein/on-the-amtrak-to-wilmingt_b_120885.html

I’m glad to hear it, because the biggest reservation I have with Obama is Biden.

A felony.

Good point. Let’s hope he doesn’t do that in the next 30 days. Or perhaps in your case you can hope that he goes out and stabs someone. Perhaps the doctor that did his hair plugs…

Just curious; did any of these attorneys of the constitution happen to explain how they manage to hold a position with regard to the constitution and senate rules that is contrary to both the constitution and senate rules?

“The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.”

How in the world can that be interpreted by attorneys of the constitution to mean that “the Vice President of the United States shall not be the President of the Senate unless they be equally divided”?

#113: Jonathan Turley of Georgetown says what Biden said is OK.

Bob, appeals to authority can be used to an bolster an argument, but using an appeal to authority as a substitute for an argument is fallacious. You haven’t said one substantive word that argues in favor of Biden’s rant about the constitution, which was frankly idiotic.

But what’s more important is that you’re misrepresenting what Turley said in order to keep Biden from looking like a moron. What Turley said must have a much more narrow application than “what Biden said,” and you know it. Did Turley say that Biden was right to say that Article I describes the Executive branch? Did Turley say that it was OK to conclude that because the VP job is described in Article I that the VP must be in the executive branch? Did he say it’s OK to say that the VP is not a member of the senate unless there’s a tie?

The point about whether the VP is in the executive branch or the legislative branch is an arguable one. Biden’s attempt to justify the assertion that the VP is in the legislative branch exposed him to be the idiot that he is.

I can’t find any lawyers who seem to think Biden was right. But the bigger gaffe, which has been largely ignored, was his comment about kicking Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Just a weird statement all around and the fact that it came from a supposed Foreign Relations guru, it’s quite embarrassing.

The President pro tempore, just like the Vice President, over time has ceased presiding over the Senate on a daily basis, owing to the mundane nature of the position. Furthermore, as the President pro tempore is now usually the most senior senator of the majority party, he or she most likely also chairs a major Senate committee, along with other duties this status entails. Therefore, the President pro tempore has less time now than in the past to preside daily over the Senate. Instead, junior senators of the majority party are designated acting President pro tempore to preside over the Senate on a daily basis. This allows junior senators to learn proper parliamentary procedure.

#116: Constitutionally, the VP is always president of the senate, whether he’s in the chamber or not.”
I believe Senate Rules say the President pro tempore is the President if the VP is not there (?)

Bob, I agree with your #118-119. Senate Rule I that I linked to earlier covers the situation you discuss in 119. It provides that the “duties of the chair” are to be assumed by the president pro tempore in in absence of the VP, and that the chair’s duties can be delegated by the president pro tempore to another senator. Although the “duties of the chair” may be assigned to any senator, there is nothing in Rule I that provides that the President pro tempore assumes the title of president of the senate. He’s still the president pro tempore.

I agree that Biden knows more about how the Senate runs, but I’m frankly disappointed that 3 of the 4 candidates on the national ticket of both major parties are career legislators. Being a career legislator is basically a no-show job. Congress is only in session 8 or 9 months of the year, and then for only 3 days a week, and then for only a few hours a day, and even then almost nobody comes. Tune into CSPAN some day when Congress is in session — nobody’s there. That few hours is mostly consumed with trivial nonsense relating to procedures.

So yeah, Biden knows more about how the Senate runs. McCain and Obama do, too. But I know enough about how it runs to know that Senate service really isn’t anything close to a real job, and that it doesn’t qualify anyone to be president (including McCain and Biden). After all, all the worst presidents were career legislators.

Clever rhetorical point.

Well the times have changed and I don’t believe that Palin is stuttering anymore. I don’t know what to think now. Now that she has resigned as Governor, what now is her hopes for a political life? Time will answer this. She may be a very shrewd polititian or she has just bowed out of the political arena altogether.

As I stated, time will answer all of these questions. I for one will give her a chance because I think that she is dynamic.