OK, I know you’ve all been on pins and needles to find out what the ol’ Bloviator thinks about last night’s VP non-debate, so here’s my scorecard:
Best Performance: Joe Biden, who, though it clearly pained him greatly to do so, somehow managed to curb his trademark gaseousness and generally keep his wingtips out of his pie hole. I confess that even though I cringe every time he opens his mouth, I actually admire ol’ Joe. He’s never forgotten where he came from or the people who are still there, and he has stood up for them for a long time. Say what you will, for a six-term senator, he either hasn’t tried very hard to line his own pockets, or if he has, he certainly hasn’t been very good at it.
Last night, once Joltin’ Joe realized that Governor Bimbo was not going to depart from her three or four hermetically sealed talking points, he lit into John McCain the way Barack Obama might have--but, probably wisely, opted not to-- in last week’s presidential sparring session. In the same way that we southerners pretend to “soften” our most hurtful remarks about someone by prefacing them with a less affectionate than condescending “Bless his heart,” Biden repeatedly assured us “I love John McCain to death” before reducing him to a pile of pulled pork.
Doggone if Sarah Six-Pack didn’t take home the “Coulda’ Been A Lot Worse, That’s for Darn Sure!" trophy by managing to staunch her bleeding a bit in last night’s proceedings, but Johnny Mac, who wasn’t even there, emerged, courtesy of his good friend Joe, with multiple colostomies and thus was the evening’s Biggest Loser. In this category, however, he was given a real run for his money by Gwen Ifill, whose should have known that her Barack Obama book deal disqualified her from moderating this affair from the get-go. Ironically, as it turned out, the real beneficiary of a compromised and apparently cowed Ifill was Sarah Palin, who was allowed to ignore any question she chose while the disengaged Ifill sometimes gave the impression that she was not even listening to what either candidate was saying. It was abundantly clear that Ifill was not the only media type who had been intimidated by McCainiac charges of “gotcha journalism,” defined here as doing anything to expose the arrogant shallowness and appalling ignorance of someone who stands a fair chance of being president sooner rather than later. A long line of reporters and pundits, headed by none other than the iconic Tom Brokaw rushed to commend Her Hockey Mom-ness for cynically flouting the formal rules of the engagement and getting away with it. Farther down the sound-byte chain one eager toady even praised Palin for giving “good answers” to questions that weren’t asked. All I can say is when Katie Couric comes across as the most professional and serious journalist covering the campaign, a heartfelt “God Help Us!” is surely in order.
As to Sarah Palin’s actual performance, let’s face it. If your dog goes over to your laptop and uses his nose to tap out a novel, your first reaction is not going to be “Rover, your plot line is pretty fuzzy at some points.” Thus it was with perky Ms. P., for whom expectations were so low that anything short of barfing moose burger on her classy new pumps was bound to be hailed as a stellar showing. Truth be told, Palin’s support base has already shrunk pretty close to an utterly irreducible core of folks who not only share her antipathy for the theory of evolution but are still a mite skeptical of recent claims that the earth isn’t flat. The McCain camp’s announced plan to put her on talk radio concedes as much, for all the likes of a flatulent, hydrocodone-crazed Rush Limbaugh have to offer is a chance to preach to a decidedly off-key choir. Somebody has to shore up the faith of the faithful, I suppose, when the polls uniformly seem to be suggesting that the ol’ “Straight Talk Express” is headed south faster than a conversion van full of crystal meth.
As I see it, the real value of these faux debates is not so much that they may help voters to make up their minds as that they may tell us when that has already happened. I was mildly surprised that McCain’s first-debate posturing and gimmickry didn’t play better than Obama’s sometimes maddening (for me, at least) restraint. Yet post-debate polls consistently showed Oby had come off quite a bit better with most viewers. (Likewise, last-night’s insta-polls and focus group analyses showed Biden the winner by comparable margins.) I’ve come to suspect that reactions to these spectacles thus far may have less to do with things like John McCain’s surly, condescending manner during the first encounter than his thoroughly ham-handed and totally transparent attempt on the eve of the debate to inject himself into the bailout game late in the fourth quarter and start claiming credit for a smashing victory that never materialized. It could well be too that some folks began to wonder how seriously McCain could be taking the financial crisis if he chose a running mate who thinks the Federal Reserve is just another one of those places where the darned government won't let you shoot anything.
Please Note: Comments are good to go. Just click and shoot, just the way John and Sarah do. By the way, the approval provision is not to protect the Ol' Bloviator's incredibly thick hide but to discourage folks from Neptune
who prefer to post in farsi.
