The VP Debate

I had to watch it on time delay because the club had our first Indoor Silhouette match of the year last night.  Joe Biden delivered a stellar debate performance by Joe Biden standards, meaning he didn’t say anything stupid, outlandish, or at any point insert his foot into his mouth.  He deserves a round of applause for that, and for putting up with the myriad of botox injections he looks like he received before his performance.  That shit is painful.

But Joe Biden has been running for President for twenty years, and despite his experience at being on the national stage, Sarah Palin kept up with him pretty much every step of the way.  Expectations of her set by the media were so low, I would actually be willing to argue she was the winner of the debate just by virtue of the fact that she showed the public she can play with the big boys.  Say what you will, she’s deserves to be on that stage, and she’s every bit as qualified as Barack Obama.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Gun Rights Attack Ad
  2. Quote of the Day
  3. Obama’s Next Move

24 thoughts on “The VP Debate”

  1. Iwonder..
    Jo e biden has been running for president for 20 years. Now that he’s the running mate and not the front-runner (read jealous second-rate President wanna-be), he too is only a heartbeat away from the president’s seat if Obama gets elected. Hmmm..

  3. “she’s every bit as qualified as Barack Obama.” Is a phrase that makes me a little nervous. We all think he’s unqualified, but we’re willing to defened Palin as “just as qualified?” We sure do set our sights low these days. Oh well. Lesser of evils again.

  5. I would argue that both of them could use more experience, noops. But the charge of unqualified can’t be bandied about by Obama supporters without that charge being quite properly leveled back.

  6. That’s true Sebastian, but the entire “unqualified” charge began with McCain supporters, not Obama supporters, so you have it exactly backwards: the charge of unqualified can’t be bandied about by McCain supporters without that charge being quite properly leveled back. In choosing Palin the McCain campaign lost one of their strongest arguments against Obama. The only reason Obama supporters bring it up is because they thought the McCain campaign was so worried about qualifications. Apparently, they were more worried about whether or not the VP had a vagina.

    And yeah, I know, Obama is the principal candidate and Palin is just the VP, but it doesn’t much matter—the VP has to be a stand-in for the principal, so in selecting a VP, one much choose a candidate who could, in fact, be the principal. There is simply no way in hell that Palin could have ever gotten nominated for POTUS. There isn’t. Seriously. Come on.

    And on a side note, just for m personally, all this “betcha” and “ya” and “darnit” dadgum doggonit Rosco P. Coltrane crap is driving me up the wall just as much as it would if Obama was speaking ebonics.

    But yeah, Biden’s eyes looked all slantier than my wife’s. Chill back on the facelifts, dude.

  7. And on a side note, just for m personally, all this “betcha” and “ya” and “darnit” dadgum doggonit Rosco P. Coltrane crap is driving me up the wall just as much as it would if Obama was speaking ebonics.

    That drives me nuts too. I wish she’d stop doing it. I think her handlers are trying to home spin her too much.

  8. Wake up call – Not everyone in this nation speaks with the same speech patterns which predominate in the Northeast, Chicago, or the West Coast. Be careful you are not exhibiting regional prejudice and the same cultural elitism with which the Demonrats are enamored.

  10. Melvin, growing up I lived in New York (upstate and the city), Maine, Florida, Colorado and Texas and now I’m in New Jersey. I don’t expect everyone to speak the same, but like I said, I would have serious reservations about Obama representing our country and speaking on the world stage if he said things like “Yo, I’ll get ya some and I’ll holla.” To me that is not fundamentally different from saying “I’ll try ta findya some and I’ll bring ’em to ya.”

    I didn’t go to college—I went to work right after high school and I’ve been working ever since—I’m not some fancy elite, but I expect the leaders of our country to be smarter than me, or at the very least I expect them to sound smarter than me. Being unable to pronounce the word “nuclear” correctly is not endearing to me.

    I’m not saying that she’s not allowed to have an accent, but I think she’s overdoing the whole Joe Six-Pack folksiness thing, and it’s grating on my nerves. Like I said, this is just my personal opinion.

  11. “… he didn’t say anything stupid, outlandish, or at any point insert his foot into his mouth.”

    Uh, with his vast experience in foreign affairs/policy –

    http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDljMDc4M2ZjYzc1YmM1MDlhZmFiZGEyMjBiZDRmYzc=

    and

    http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/35261

    Seems I missed a major Armed Forces intervention in a major country, followed by an offer to send in NATO to fight the UN troops occupying the ground – among other things.

    OTOH, I’m inclined to give him a pass on leaving out a couple of words – the VP can only vote in the Senate to break a tie. But [check Volokh] he really messed up the whole definition of VP, which is worrying in someone trying to get that office.

  12. And just to be clear … her speech patterns are not what concerns me about her being POTUS, it just really bugs me, that’s all.

    I think she’s using her folksy charm and her down-home speaking and her smiles and cutesy winks to try and distract us from the fact that she’s not really saying all that much about a lot of these topics, because she doesn’t really know all that much about a lot of these topics.

    I don’t think she knows that much about anything that doesn’t directly relate to Alaska, and that concerns me. I think she’s smart, I just don’t think she has a lot of knowledge, which I do think is important.

  13. I think the question is who has the right to proclaim how nuclear should be pronounced. I believe there are regional variations just as whether you call that sweet carbonated beverage pop, soda or coke. Do the smarty pants city dwellers and major media types get to make all the pronunciation rules?

  14. I am more concerned that a person has proper values, basic smarts, and executive skills, rather than that they have 35 years of experience being a gas bag. After all a President or VP has policy wonks out the ying yang at their disposal for advice. What good is Slow Joe’s experience if he still makes decisions like he’s got his head up his butt?

  15. I thought she started strong and finished strong, but faltered there in the middle for a bit. Also, re folksy accent, I live in semi-poor, semi-rural Texas and the speech patterns were driving me nuts. It was like somebody trying to speak Southern with some sort of horrible quasi-midwestern accent, dontcha know. I thought Biden seemed far more comfortable and competent. I thought Palin sounded like a cheesy local news anchor at times. Though I am SO grateful that Sarah Palin tolerates me (as a girl who likes to kiss other girls (sober) ). That wasn’t patronizing at all. I’m reluctantly voting for Obama in November, but never fear, for in Texas that counts as throwing your vote away.

  16. “I think the question is who has the right to proclaim how nuclear should be pronounced.”

    With all due respect, that’s ridiculous. It’s not like the difference between tuh-mey-toh or toe-mah-toe …. that’s a difference in pronunciation, but it’s the same word. Saying “nucular” is simply the wrong damn word, it’s like saying you want to “aks” me a question—it’s flipping the letters, and it’s incorrect, period. It doesn’t take no highfalootin’ fancy book learnin’ to know that.

  18. Carrie, I thought she started strong as well, I thought she was going to kick Biden’s ass at the beginning. But then she kept ignoring the questions and just saying “maverick” whenever she didn’t know the answer. I think she just doesn’t know enough about the issues.

  19. And she does have to lay off the folksy. I think her handlers are telling her to play that up, because when she speaks casually, she sounds normal. But I also think you tend to revert back to your accent when you speak in public too. I notice myself having a much worse Philadelphia accent speaking publicly then I do if I’m talking to someone in a room.

  20. I noticed in the CNN debates, which track audience reaction, that people don’t seem to like the whole maverick shtick. I think a lot of people think maverick=asshole.

  22. I think the maverick thing would have been fine if used in moderation, but I was watching on CSPAN so I didn’t see the audience tracking. I heard that when she called leaving Iraq the “white flag of surrender” that the reaction plummeted straight down 35 points, which actually surprised me.

  23. Nucular is an ad hoc spelling of an incorrect pronunciation of the word nuclear, representing the NEW-cue-lurr pronunciation of that word instead of the correct NEWK-lee-urr. This pronunciation is incorrect, although some dictionaries recognize it because of its increasing usage.

    Look, I said it just bothered me personally. It does, it sounds ignorant to me, and just because a lot of people pronounce it wrong isn’t going to change my mind. And I doubt you’d be defending Obama if he spoke in ebonics or used an unusual amount of African-American colloquialisms. I sure wouldn’t.

    But that’s just me I guess.

Comments are closed.