[OFB Cafe] Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse

[Fred Smith]

Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for
both female candidates and US political discourse

Michelle Goldberg
guardian.co.uk
Friday October 03 2008 18:30 BST

[ Photo of Palin winking during debate omitted ]

Sarah Palin winks during the vice-presidential debate on Thursday in
St Louis, Missouri. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable,
preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had
a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity
made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of
the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and
mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards
both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with
her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is
now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male
presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she
made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of
actually answering the queries put to her. "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," she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects
she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted
attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to
her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely
described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to
judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric
they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as
interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both
venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a
candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or
she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of
the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The
criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin
could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether
urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public
that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor,
mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic
beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her
personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her
answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the
encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said
was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about
how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush
administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:

begin Palin excerpt:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You
preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now
doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan
to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad
you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife
being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in
heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher
in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at
Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the
debate.

end Palin excerpt

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of
speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her
to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking
points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her
spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and
dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either
didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain
chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America.
Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a
special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we
going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to
college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old
daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-
described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the
truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life,
never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-
presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind
of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That
her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how
high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.