First impressions of the Vice Presidential debate
No doubt Karl Rove was whispering in Palin’s ear, because she did just fine.
This was the Palin of the convention and not of the ill-fated Gibson and Couric interviews. And she gets extra points for courage, because this was like the final game of the World Series—a must-win for Palin in the sense that she could not falter, and had to project competence while under unbelievable pressure.
A few notes I took while it was happening:
Palin’s folksy way of speaking—“heck,” dropping her g’s, “nucular”—are gonna drive the chattering classes nuts.
“Your plan is a white flag of surrender.” The first real solid hit from Palin. And it sounded like an ad lib, even though it may have been prepared.
Biden’s basic decency shows when he says that McCain didn’t vote for funding the troops, but honestly adds that it was because of the inclusion of the timeline.
She certainly seems no fool.
All this first name business is driving me nuts.
“Say it ain’t so Joe!” from Palin. Nice.
“It is my executive experience…” Yes, she’s the only one who has any.
Oh, so Biden’s a neocon about Pakistan. Who knew?
Great way to make both Biden and Obama look bad for their continual attacks on Bush—to say they were looking back instead of forward.
For her summation she puts on her game face. She is serious and slows down for emphasis, which is an excellent idea.
And now I’m watching a Fox News group of Undecideds, most of whom thought Palin won the debate. All say she was better than expected.
[ADDENDUM: Saw Giuliani speaking on Fox and his smile was broad and relaxed. That says a lot. A bit of hyperbole from him—he said Palin gave one of the best debate performances he’s ever seen. I would say instead it was a good performance, and maybe one of the gutsiest ever.
Karl Rove points out that Biden was incorrect over and over about McCain’s Senate votes. Don’t sit on a hot stove till the MSM takes a look at this, though.
And now for the oleaginous Dick Morris, who said the equivalent of “when Biden was speaking, I kept wishing it was Palin.” I think he’s in love.
Joe Lieberman looks happy, too. “She was brilliant tonight.”]
Told ya so 🙂
I was paying attention to Biden’s body language and face, as well as his delivery. He was tense, and at times I could tell he was angry, if that is a genuine emotion (narcissists can fake it well). There seemed to be a deliberate and disciplined attempt on his part to keep John McCain and George Bush joined at the hip, express the usual class warfare anger, and other such pap.
Joe Biden is not a pleasant man. I think he has to work hard at being gracious, it does not come easy to him.
What amazes me: his shocking naivete about Iran’s leadership and intentions. I take it as a valid observation that Biden is a hard man and hard men can understand the world as it really is. But this guy strangely does not get it. Anyone who can illumine that for me gets kudos from me.
Yea, I noted the … folksy way … of speaking. I think she is MUCH more comfortable when talking like that and it showed. There is *no* reason why one can not express complex and difficult tasks in such a simple way and, IMO, that shows a greater degree of intelligence than what Biden does. I made a comment to my parents about how the lefties are probably pulling their hair out – they didn’t even really notice it until then and mostly just felt she was speaking to them.
I also noted another interesting difference that, in one question, was explicitly stated. Biden’s answers were along the line of him shoring up Obama’s lack of experience and that he will “be right there” to tell him what to do in those difficult times. In contrast Palin talked of McCain’s ability to lead, his trust in her allowing him to have her fill in a few gaps, and giving her on the job training.
I think that in this presidential race that is telling that Biden basically says “I will be the president until Obama learns” and Palin says “I’ll be an active vice president and be ready if called upon”. There *should* be some good commercials from the debate if someone makes them about this.
Now, if only McCain had actually *lead* during the bail out instead of running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off that would have made a MUCH stronger impact. Obama’s typical stand and do nothing looked good in comparison.
Once more I think Palin has bailed his butt out of the political fire with a good performance (and the number of people tuning in to watch her helps too). I think McCain should do the same thing he did with her – fire his “trainers” (or whatever you want to call them) and just be himself. I’ve always hated McCain the most when he was trying to do something politically “smart” – many times it got him in the spotlight on TV but that was not because he was doing something popular with the constituents. He has *always* been at his peak when he is (like Palin did tonight) simply himself and let the chips fall where they will. They almost always fall better than when he tries to make them do what he wants.
Most of the Lefties on Alan Colmes blog said they did think she did better than anyone would have expected.
He lost it several times, clearly angry, he get pretty scary looking, he also lied several times, I am sure the media will point out those misrepresentations NOT.
She did as well as I thought she would do, there should be many voters questioning what they have been told about her in the last 30 days, wishful thinking maybe, now she should go on an all out media blitz.
By the way Neo, thanks for the late night post, I knew you were watching and wondered how you saw it, appreciate it.
*happy*
No TV, here, so I’m very glad to hear it went well.
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I think the “folksy” is on purpose.
I chose to listen and not watch most of the debate.
I’m clinging to my guns and religion, but I’m still sick and tired of both of ’em (especially Palin) droppin’ the G off of everythinG. I get why she does it — evidently she’s goin’ fer what someone is telling her is the countrified/illiterate vote, but why does Biden have to match her? Brings both of them down in my eyes (Biden didn’t have far to fall anyway. I believe Fred’s comments on Biden’s character.).
Palin narrowly lost the 1st 3rd, won the 2nd (Energy) and massively lost the last third. But then I was actually listening to what was actually said.
She avoided most of the questions. To be fair, Biden avoided them when it was convenient, but he won point by point. Some of her answers were not even in the same Galaxy in relation to the questions, while he was on point almost across the board.
I’m also sick to my stomach listening to the various spin-meisters doing their fact-avoidance.
Well, she has the righties gushing and the lefties rushing about trying to find something, anything creditably negative to day. That looks like a win to me.
This real-Palin performance really looks bad on Gibson and Couric. They just lost the last few regular Americans they had left over their obvious biased interviews.
I believe the viewer numbers will high for this debate and joe-sixpack knows a winner when he see her.
Again, I would like to ask anyone who finds it a curious thing. Joe Biden is not a nice man. He’s a hard man, and he has lied throughout his career to advance himself. It’s indisputable.
I have always thought that bad men, hard men can size each other up and take the measure of each other. They know and are actually comfortable around other bad men, because it’s familiar to them and they can get into each other’s thought process. I’ve been to gatherings of people and have been struck by how the narcissists all tend to gravitate towards each other. But hard men, bad men (and women too) do not at all like to be around good people. They are instinctually able to size them up and they don’t like them at all. I’ve seen it happen at business meetings and in social situations: good people are treated by bad people as if they have a “Hit me!” sign on their backs.
So… why is it that Joe Biden cannot correctly size up the Mullahs, Ahmadinejad, and Putin? Many years ago, he would side with foreign leaders, not overtly, but subtlely via policy who were hostile to the United States. Is Biden just politically posturing about Iran not being much of a threat? Or, does he strangely believe this?
I have to remind myself of the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Strangely, Stalin trusted Hitler, and Hitler double crossed him. Stalin was a hard man – a bad man. And he completely misread Hitler and his intentions.
jackscrow, I really, really recommend you get a hearing test. If you believe Biden won the last third, you were hearing voices. And not those broadcast to the rest of us.
Palin’s folksy vernacular is on purpose but it isn’t fake. She speaks in that manner when she is rushed or passionate. She connects with those of us out in the hinterlands because she is one of us.
I meant to post this on this thread:
Palin just wrecked Biden:
Palin: “Freedom isn’t something we pass to our kids in their bloodstream; it’s something we fight for and something we teach them to fight for.”
“This is America. It is exceptional. It is the Shining City on the Hill, as Reagan said.”
Biden:
“Blah blah Bush”
“Blah blah Souplines”
“Blah blah Let’s lose the War….”
As a McCain Palin supporter, I will say where I think she could have done better
The Details. She is light on those in regards to things coming from Washington. Though I dont know what’s expected of someone who has no previous exposure to Washington.. I dont recall this being a major issue for anyone in the past, but most VP picks have been people from inside Washington scene
Blaming Wall St. Wall St did exactly what the Federal Gov, The Clinton and Bush White Houses, Congress and the Fed told them to do.. and that was trade in mortgage securities, buy them from Fannie, and have banks hemorrhage loans and sell them to Fannie.
And all of that stems from policies originated and expanded by Democrats. She should have made the case to the people that the Democrats caused this disaster and they cant’ be allowed to be the ones to “fix it”.. but she didnt’ and let Joe Biden get away with his lies that it was Bush policy at the root.
President of the Senate: Good luck with that, John Adams didn’t get very far, I dont think you will either.
Criticisms aside, I think she did a good job, and so did Biden and the moderator too.
Biden certainly knew a lot, which you’d expect. But as he droned on and on, I knew that most Americans were starting to snore. And as he got irritated, he got more and more long-winded, which didn’t help. I was disturbed by his endless string of outright lies, but I guess it can’t be helped.
Bottom line: Biden didn’t commit and real gaffes, but he was unable to defeat a newbie on the national/international political scene. That makes him the real loser tonight.
P.S. I expect Katie Couric to be wearing black during tomorrow’s evening news.
That makes him the real loser tonight.
And his forehead lost.
His creepy, creepy unmoving botoxed eyebrows over those beady little eyes and his unlined, paralyzed brow lost.
Governor Palin tonight shoved it in the face of every national journalist.
Palin was Reaganesque in the way she connected with middle America – by which I also mean she connected with working class America on the East Coast, and with middle manager white collar America on the East Coast.
Neither Reagan nor Palin put great stock in playing a moderator’s tune, nor in getting bogged in minute detail. Both Reagan and Palin played their own tune. Reagan was criticized for this, yet knew what he was doing, as subsequent elections proved.
Biden was big on economic grievances and class warfare, which is really what his party’s base wanted to hear. He was hoping to repackage it well so that he could peel folks in the Middle Muddle away. Everything I heard him say, I’ve heard many, many times before stated in many different ways. His mind is not an original one. The “substance” of what he had to say was pap in slightly different packaging. He said a lot. Palin said less at times, but more is not necessarily better.
I find it curious that a state as prosperous as Delaware is, where there are a lot of upper middle class and wealthy people, keeps sending this class-warfare blowhard back to the Senate. It’s very strange.
I wanted Palin to make the point more forcefully that the way to bring energy prices down in the short, medium, and long term is to increase the supply of it – of all kinds. It seemed that the discussion about energy flirted too much with the junk science of man made global warming – with all the tiresome references to carbon footprint, etc. Both candidates did not do justice to the energy problem beyond the cliches of acceptable jargon and ideas. I was disappointed. Palin tried to, but I think that Biden and the moderator had firmly rooted that discussion only in a politically correct direction.
I have to admit, I was very anxious for Sarah Palin tonight and almost didn’t want to watch the debate. After her weak-ish interview performances I had not exactly lost face in her but did wonder whether she is as tough as she needs to be. In the end of course it came back to something you have touched on before: Palin, as coached by the campaign advisors vs. Palin, as herself. Tonight, in my opinion and bar a couple of exceptions, she was herself. Focusing on what she does know and what she is good at, not allowing a question or smitten Biden to derail her. That’s right, I think Biden was quite smitten by this beautiful and “surprisingly” sharp and upbeat woman. I think he would quite like to be HER vice president. But I guess now I am being quite sexist here, shush.
McCain – I’ve come to respect much more than ever before – but he is the weak side of the team. Palin has that Reagan ability to connect with the audience. McCain can be painful to watch during his debating.
With her convention speech, and now this magnificent performance tonight, Palin has laid the foundation for her to assume the leadership of the party come November 4, win or lose. She will not be blamed for any loss should that come to pass. She will only get stronger and more confident in her speaking to the hostile Gibsons and Courics of the MSM, and her command of the issues deeper.
Ugh, of course I meant faith.
Biden kept referring to his working class roots–the old “Lunch Pail” Biden shtick, when Biden left Scranton, PA when he was 10 and 65 year old Biden hasn’t been a member of the “working class” since he was 18; for most of his life he has been feeding at the government trough.
I notice tha that a recent news report about an interview with Biden said that reporters were trying to catch Biden at his “family compound.’ I wonder how many working class voters in Delaware and around the country are wealthy enough to have a “Family compound?”
I’m voting McCain-Palin, but I thought Biden won the debate. Palin made a good show, and it seems her strategy was to use the debate to make her pitch to the people, but that meant she ignored some questions and sometimes gave brief and unsatisfactory answers before running down her talking points. Maybe her strategy was a good one that will help her ticket, but just in the context of the debate, I left the TV feeling like Biden did better overall.
I hope she did well enough to offset the interview clips being shown.
Also, it did seem like Biden got the last word on a lot of things, but I wasn’t counting.
I hope that the McCain Campaign lights-up the media with highlights of Biden’s mis-representations…for example, I would like to more about the following from this self-avowed foreign policy expert…
a) the U.S. kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon and Bush let them back in?
b) Biden did not say that he was against building any coal plants in the U.S. and that coal kills people?
c) Biden would attack Pakistan – does that make him a neo-con?
d) Obama agitated for reforming Fanny May /Freddy Mac two years ago?
e) Obama’s always been for the war in Afghanistan?
f) McCain voted against funding our troops?
g) blah, blah, blah, blah…..?
I stated in an earlier post that Biden is a known liar. Thanks Danny Lemieux for picking up on some more of Biden’s whoppers. Good job.
Biden is a bad man. So, again, why does he seem to miscalculate about Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs?
“What amazes me: his shocking naivete about Iran’s leadership and intentions. I take it as a valid observation that Biden is a hard man and hard men can understand the world as it really is. But this guy strangely does not get it. Anyone who can illumine that for me gets kudos from me.”
I doubt he’s naive at all, actually he’s a career politician, if the politically expedient works, to stay employed, he doesn’t hesitate to use it, so an issue of the gravity of Iran is only a “political” issue, on the tightrope of, expedience; Exemplary are his flip-flops on Obama’s “qualifications”, etc., when the opportunity to lock in 4 years as V.P. arose. Furthermore he’s a mature man who has made a long career out of being in the senate, now glossing over Obama’s only two years in the senate while spending most of his time campaigning, successfully, for the presidency. If I was Biden, being upstaged by a far left-wing liar and fraud, I don’t think I’d have much respect for Obama’s “experience”, unless being upstaged by him could lend another raise, and some important prestige. That these people now garner enough votes to probably get elected in November is symptomatic of the europeanization of American culture.
Incidentally, Biden made a comment about never questioning his opponents “motives”, only their decisions. That Biden is running with Obama now makes his “motive” very much suspect, as a career politician.
While I thought Gwen Ifil did a fair and excellent job, it’s disappointing that she didn’t seem to recognize that she was engaging in a significant lapse of integrity, of conflict of interest, by not disclosing the release of her coming book. Democrats……..
Perfected democrat,
You mean to say that he’s BAD enough that he would put his country, other nations, and all of civilization into the hazard just for his own advancement? Now, THAT’S pretty cold. He’s actually worse than I imagined. That means his new boss is just as much a sociopath as their puppet master, George Soros.
Evil times have befallen on my country. Please God, help us survive it.
Or, maybe our citizenry too is also so corrupted that it cannot see evil when it is staring us in the face?
I wonder how many working class voters in Delaware and around the country are wealthy enough to have a “Family compound?”
My high school science teacher actually has a family compound– we call it Fort Putnam. They put up a 15′ fence with pig wire and poles, planted trees on both sides, and vines on the wire. Encompassing about the area of a normal house and lawn……
(not really defending, just offering Strange Stories of Washington State.
“… maybe our citizenry too is also so corrupted that it cannot see evil when it is staring us in the face?”
Not corrupted, just incredibly shallow; Probably too much t.v. and Hollyood movie culture, and a population so generally well protected from real violence and privation that it has ceased to recognize reality, and the possible consequences of taking the path to the left, along the yellow brick road?
Perfected democrat,
I like your answer. It is rational and appeals to the optimist in me that thinks that maybe hard reality can still be instructive.
Do you think that the people can learn, as did many of us (I was a bit late on the lesson, as I did not leave the Left until 1987) in my generation (the younger Boomers) during the Carter years? The next four years are going to be a real hard lesson in reality. Will people come to their senses then? And will our nation be able to weather what may be some catastrophic events? I’m speaking about Iran, nukes, and other bad actors having their way with us.
“I thought Biden won the debate. Palin made a good show, and it seems her strategy was to use the debate to make her pitch to the people, but that meant she ignored some questions and sometimes gave brief and unsatisfactory answers before running down her talking points.”
That is important in formal debating rules – say when you are on a debating team. In that context it doesn’t even matter if you make a persuasive argument or not.
In that sense VERY few republicans have won debates in the last 50 years. Probably the best of them (and one of the best I have ever seen) is Cheney – his command of the fact, details, and his sheer confidence make him one of the most “effective” debaters I have ever witnessed. It was a thing of beauty to watch him debate – his vice presidential debate with Edwards should be the core of a debating course.
However, in where a real debate is important – that is in persuasion – those things are irrelevant. This is another case where Cheney should be witnessed. His voice, his bearing, and just “him” in general is *really* off putting.
Bush “lost” pretty much every single debate in two elections – yet who is president?
Biden scored high in formal debating, Palin low. The moment she said “gonna” that was the end, there is *no* way to recover from that in a formal debate. Yet, for the most part, in a war of persuasion it is irrelevant (and in many cases can be an asset).
Reagan was one of those people that really and truly nailed that persuasion aspect. With respect to formal rules he was probably one of his worst – in fact his most persuasive statement “You sir, are no Kennedy” was *horrid* formal debating rules, in fact there isn’t really a strong enough term for how bad your grade would be. However, it most likely won an election by a landslide.
The media also regularly uses this change in context to declare whoever they want as the “winner”. There is almost no person around that regularly wins in both fields.
I note that Clinton was hailed as a Great Debater because he did so well connecting with people (Bush Sr was a first class formal Debater) and Kerry was the Wonderful Orator because he had superior form. We all see which won elections and was more important – we see that since debates were televised.
Not to mention Biden’s Frankenstein looks tonight – surely he could find a better make-up artist. That was *terrible*. Outside of when he first got the hair plugs that’s the worst I have seen him look.
I agree with Perfected Democrat here – I note that the higher degree one has control over their environment the more liberal they are. Liberalism assumes many variables can be controlled in such a way to produce the outcome they want – were those variable actually controllable the liberalism is (IMO) actually not a bad system.
“The next four years are going to be a real hard lesson in reality. Will people come to their senses then? And will our nation be able to weather what may be some catastrophic events?”
Next four years? Probably not – things are going to have to get bad. Bad enough that they loose control. That control is going to be all the way down to environmental – even in rural Tennessee *everything* shuts down when the AC or heat goes down – and I mean everything. Any society that the rural parts are that way has a high degree of control over their environment (and I don’t mean *just* physical there either).
Anything short of an actual WMD will not likely knock the sense into more than a small to medium percentage of the people (and that is *only* only on the self defense front). It’s too easy (and comforting) to think those people aren’t out there and, if they are, we are in control.
The financial thing going on know is barely enough to knock some sense into the housing market. I don’t really expect it to go much further than that – the next “bubble” will build and burst too. The talk of the people effected are *exactly* like those of us in the IT industry in the early 00’s (it’s just that few were really in that industry). There is no talk of it being a bubble, there is no talk of how to recognize one, and there is no talk of how to manage the next one. I refer to them (bubbles) as legal ponzi schemes – the CEO’s and the top of the ponzi make out, those of us on the bottom (willing member or no) get left with the bill.
But, one of the great things about capitalism is that it is self correcting. It sucks to be in one of those correction phases – I’m sure people that lived through the 30’s could attest to that (people seem to think that we can somehow come up with a system that always grows – go see the whole “can’t control all those variable” above). However those periods are where we learn and the prosperity after that is where we forget.
For FredHjr:
a quotation.
“…There in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark thingks moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, of of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it.”
Goodnight, all.
Frankly I’m pessimistic, the shift to a european left cultural motif engenders, eventually inculcates a widespread personality of dependency after several generations. Look at the rest of the world, socialists believe that system is the only pragmatic and moral choice of societal construction, essentially mocking traditional American values idealizing self-reliance and personal responsibility, including for certain bad decisions. That high profile politicians are bantering about allowing judges the arbitrary power of changing the terms of so-called “predatory” mortgages, after the fact, obfuscates the truth of the situation that most, if not all of the victims, were knowingly gambling, in the midst of a very well known real estate bubble environment. I’ve said it before recently, but I don’t believe that someone sophisticated enough to get there, and sits thru a mortgage “closing”, didn’t know the consequences of not making their payments. When do people wake up and return to the original American model, and what degree of fiasco does it take? Look at England, France and several others. Talk about sliding down the slippery slope, England has now formally legitimized aspects of sharia legal structure… In a rational world one would expect the British to have finally, and resolutely, set limits on that encroaching poison culture in their midst. It’s been only 7 years since the 9/11 tragedy, during a major war effort, and now an Obama, with an incredibly inappropriate background and political agenda, is about to rise to POTUS here. From the MSM to the campaign posters, it’s all starting to look a little Orwellian…
I think this debate shows how massively the campaign mis-managed Palin.
To get into the way-back machine…if only they’d gone from the RNC speech to a series of friendly soft interviews while they prepped her, then to this debate…people’s view of her would be so different, and only *now* would it be time for her to step into the harsh light of the mainstream media trying to trip her up.
Sure, Andrew Sullivan and company would have screamed blue murder that she was only doing interviews on friendly turf…but heck, Obama did that his whole campaign until O’Reilly (possibly also the Stephanopoulos interview, which I haven’t seen), and she’s just the VP, so they could weather it (certainly better than the disastrous effects of the Gibson/Couric interviews).
Of course this retconned strategy uses full benefit of hindsight…could they know that Gibson would give her an interview completely different than the one he gave Edwards, who was in a similar boat experience and knowledge-wise? Could they know that the interviews would be edited to pieces to practically put sentences together for her word by word?
Ah well, we got what we got.
Perhaps the best thing about the VP debate was the way you could just imagine the weeping of those who, mere hours earlier, had been waxing rhapsodic about how Palin would make Chernobyl look like a minor meltdown.
Last night was a bit of redemption for Gov. Palin. I despise the Palin hating MSM and the way Couric ambushed her, then selected out the parts of the interview that made her look terrible. That being said, she can’t use MSM bias as an excuse because it is the atmosphere we breathe. It was a hard lesson to learn that one can “smile and smile, and be a villain.” Tell me neo, and other readers, what was another SCOTUS decision you disagreed with. I had to bail on that one. Is that relevant, except to show you took a constitutional law class? And why did you wait until LAST YEAR to apply for a passport? You could see how rattled she got when she couldn’t even blurt out the name of a newspaper that she had read. Thankfully, the debate went a long way to reverse the impressions left after the debate. And by the way, even though hearing the term “nucular” for me is like nails scraping on a blackboard (my Dad was in the US Navy commanding a “nucular” submarine), I should like to point out that President Dwight D Eisenhower was the first president to consistently mis-pronounce nuclear. And he seemed to have done all right.
Amazing the difference between the way the Con and Lib blogs are spinning this.
Each one saw a different debate and very few of them seem to have actually heard the answers (or, in most cases, the non-answers).
I wish there was a way to actually get candidates to answer important questions….
The obvious is that our “News” providers are becoming more polarized. Each is functioning as a spin-meister for a particular party.
I cringed at Palin’s initial responses as she wasn’t answering the questions – but when she stated that she was not going to answer the way Biden or the moderator wanted and was going to bypass the “filter” of the Mainstream Media and speak directly to the American people – I got it.
Basically, she knows she was a victim of “gotcha” tactics by both Gibson and Couric (via cutting room floor editing that made her look like an idiot) and this was her opportunity to speak above the heads of the media and present her true self rather than this stereotype the media was creating of her.
I still think it was an awkward start, and wish she had responded differently or used a different tactic to make the point, but I understand it.
Once she got that out of her system she hit her stride and the longer the debate went on the better she got.
Towards the end you could tell she was enjoying herself and knew she had accomplished what she needed to achieve.
Palin showed herself to be competent on the issues, not intimidated by Biden, comfortable in front of the American people on live national tv, and willing to go nose to nose with the competition – all while smiling sweetly, winking occasionally, and generally charming everyone.
Biden, on the other hand, while competent, simply managed at the very end to present himself as human when referencing personal tragedy. Prior to that he made several subtle gaffes and I know he misrepresented facts more than once.
End result is a home run for Palin.
Oh, so Biden’s a neocon about Pakistan. Who knew?
Of course. Have to agree with Obama on that. And Obama as essentially said he’d wage pre-emptive war on Pakistan if they don’t clean up their act along the Afghan border.
FredHjr asks:
So, again, why does he seem to miscalculate about Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs?
I don’t think it is a miscalculation, per se. They both have the same goal: radical changes to the United States. Where they disagree is in the nature of the final outcome. The leftists envision a Socialist States of America and the Islamists envision a Islamic States of America.
Much like Putin, the leftists believe they will come out on top of folks who bitterly cling to their guns and Qu’ran.
In the mean time, it’s the old enemy of my enemy is my friend schtick.
Well, the spin is now set amongst the Obama supporters – at least my perusal of a fair number of articles that allows comments has a consistent messages.
Palin had rehearsed and memorized answers and that was all she delivered – tired old canned republican answers (maybe even the ones Bush gave her). Biden, OTOH, has such a huge memory and is so smart it was easy to get mixed up and say things that simply aren’t true. Even though the action never happened Palin doesn’t even *remotely* have the knowledge to say that the US kicked Hezbolla out of Lebanon – only someone with his great knowledge and intellect could have come up with that one.
If you ever want to note that there is *nothing* that the Obama campaign can say and do that their supporters will not like see that. The US and France have *never* had a joint venture in that area, Hezbolla has *never* been kicked out of Lebanon, therefore our lack of interference could never have led them back. Then, if we say “he obviously meant Syria” then we are back to more obviously incorrectness. Again, we *never* partnered with France and Syria was never a part of the official govt (Hezbolla was and is).
Plus I note the “I’m a republican and have been all my life” people are out in full force. I expect a number here shortly too. I always wonder why they think we will believe them when they even still use lefty slang (the Bushies, McChimpy, extreme Right-wing propaganda, and all the other derogatory words used for Republicans/conservatives). They are currently informing us that no true conservative would like Palin’s performance last night – they know as a life long supporter of McChimpy.
interesting comments all through. I enjoyed your comments, strcpy, about debate and about
Dan: I thought Couric’s demand that Palin name another SCOTUS decision with which she disagreed was absurd. And of course if Palin had named one, everyone would have ripped apart her answer because it wasn’t legally knowledgeable, even though there’s no need for her to be a legal scholar. My guess is that she might have been able to name one, but chose not to go there because of the grilling that would follow. Couric’s question was one of those lose/lose situations for Palin.
But I know exactly what my answer would have been. This is the decision that made my blood boil, and convinced me that the Supreme Court had lost its collective mind. Still does.
strcpy Says:
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 am
“IReagan was one of those people that really and truly nailed that persuasion aspect. With respect to formal rules he was probably one of his worst – in fact his most persuasive statement “You sir, are no Kennedy” was *horrid* formal debating rules, in fact there isn’t really a strong enough term for how bad your grade would be. However, it most likely won an election by a landslide.
Not that it matters, but the quote that you refer to was uttered by Lloyd Bentsen in his debate with Dan Quayle in the 1988 VP debate. I agree that its likely the most lethal blow ever exacted in a presidential debate – yet it wasn’t lethal to the top of the ticket.
Reagan’s most memorable angry quote was “I paid for this microphone, Mr Greene!” and most folksy rejoinder was “there you go again…”
That last quote was retreaded by Palin last night in the form of “Say it ain’t so, Joe…”
Maybe that’ll stick, maybe not. We’ll have to read the History of the Peoples Republic of America in a couple of decades to find out… that is if we are allowed to.
“Reagan’s most memorable angry quote was “I paid for this microphone, Mr Greene!” and most folksy rejoinder was “there you go again…””
Yep, your right. “There you go again…” was the one I was looking for. I could not remember and a google search turned up the “kennedy” quote so I though it was the right one. Usually google serves me well on that stuff, sometimes not.
In my defense – I was 5 in 1980 so it is from reading and watching videos. Normally I would say VP debates do not matter, but this is a special case (I normally tune in for about 30 or so minutes to one mostly out of curiosity – this one and Cheney/Edward were the only two I watched more of). Nor do I think that the “say it ain’t so Joe” will be remembered long – probably forgotten by election time. I chose that “Kennedy” quote because it was one that really made nearly everyone declare the same winner.
My point was merely that formal debating rules have little to do with who actually “won” a debate if you are looking at who was more persuasive. In that sense there is a great deal of things go into it – and polls grading and asking people who “won” means little too. Too many definitions of that and few are even answering the same question (again Kerry won every debate by almost any measure except the one that really counted).
“Not that it matters,”
I would also add, even though I got it wrong, things like that *do* matter.
My point still stands and everyone makes mistakes – but if anyone notices one like that they should be corrected. Plus how often one makes them is important too. I don’t think I make them that often – I generally know how what I do not know and the proper way to look them up. But, mistakes happen and it is best to be corrected.
At least if someone does a search on it and gets this link then it will not be another one attributing it to Reagan 🙂
Neo, given that “Say it ain’t so” is often your line, it was pretty funny that Palin used it.