Great, maybe they will get what they asked for. I've been hoping she oversell herself and we'd hear a chant for more of The New Sarah.

I argued yesterday that it would be foolish for McCain to think he could hide her for a month because The Debate did not end his campaign and she is not a small part of it. I predicted a good performance would be a curse and she'd have to live up to her improved image. My analogy was a quarterback who was booed for a 1-6 start and won game eight. With eight games to go he couldn't sit on the bench and bask in the glory of two wins. It will be a trick for her to hide when there was a giddy response to her 90 minutes of theatrics.

A 'managed month' where she only speaks to the base (rallies and media from the right) will be met by a cry for her to help Johnny out on Sunday morning shows, another shot at legit interviews and a stand up in front of the press. By claiming she did well, the right may have conned their own group into thinking she can't be sheltered.

She is once again the game-changer (they still need one) but in that regard they'll regret what they wished for. Yeah, she did not fail...she did well in The Debate!

So go for it and take your winner out for the next 30 days and keep on winning. Put her in the arena she has avoided and we'll see how she does. After all, she proved last night she can take it to Obama-Biden...right?

I always have trouble following editorialists' logic.  Palin does terribly in interviews, but passably in speeches and moderated debates, therefore.. she should do more interviews?

Also, I'm pretty sure that not knowing any magazines or Supreme Court decisions deserves to an epic judgment on her fitness to be VP

Jon, sorry to disagree, but, by normative measures when judging a candidate's performance, Palin was good to very good (some will say excellent, which I translate "outperform plus."). She actually engaged Biden and got in some pretty good zingers, spoke well of McCain and underscored his brief for election clearly and forcefully. She came across as unfussy, plain spoken, humorous in her folksy way. What's to disparage?

The more I think about the Couric interviews (will they go down in history as "The Couric Interviews" or "The Couric-Palen Interviews?") the more Palin just was unprepared, which was her campaign's fault as much or more than hers.

Make no mistake, Sarah is a very smart lady, and a formidable politician.

If anyone was really listening to her, I doubt they could feel positive about her performance  The comments about the presidency, nuclear weapons, the middle east were those of an undergraduate who had crammed the textbook for the oral exam: unable to actually provide a coherent answer, she threw out concepts strung together in long rambling sentences that made no sense with no clear understanding of what they really meant.   What impressed people was her ability to actually refer to concepts, which is better than what she was able to do in her interviews.  As for understanding what she was talking about, her run ons clearly where symptomatic of someone trying to kill time with words.   When she couldn't directly answer  or want to answer the question, she threw out the standard stump speech banalities and campaign slogans that could only appeal to an American public that has been trained to respond  as if we were Pavlov's dogs.  If there is a rose in the cross of the present, its probably the fact that the American public is actually listening for one and the old Republican homilies won't make sense.

Sarah Palin had the rules of the debate changed so that her obviously limited mental abilities, lack of knowledge and experience wouldn't embarrass her handlers.

Hence, this was a psuedo-debate, a mulligan for the cute dumb girl (as if any man would dare) that is such an insult to qualified women everywhere who would die before doing any such thing.  The whole thing was as phony and contrived as she is.

I think its a shame that the press let them get away from it and even more shameful that she took it.

If she wants to be treated fairly and equally, then perform faily and equally.  She has not done that in any way.

Either she has a real debate or she and her supporters should quit whining and demanding respect, cheering on the fact that she doesn't faint as proof of her qualifications. Supporting a candidate whose only skills are memorizing bullet points and trying not to spout gibberish is almost treason.

God forbid she should actually go one on one with a real journalist ala Meet the Press or have a press conference like any other male candiate would be required to do to even break even in gaining credibility.  God forbid she act like a professional while demanding the second highest job in government.  

This lowering of standards is disgraceful and sexist towards women AND men. Sad.

Wandreycer1  "Sarah Palin had the rules of the debate changed so that her obviously limited mental abilities, lack of knowledge and experience wouldn't embarrass her handlers."

Only a surprise if one thinks it is not 'about her'. But "mental abilities, lack of knowledge and experience" were a non-starter and she had to win with her theatrics.

Change the rules, ignore Gwen? No big deal...it was her 'show' and she needed to shift the advantage to doing what she wanted, when she wanted and Gwen and Joe would only get in the way of her act.

As I've said, she's dumb as a fox...

Sarah Palin is capable of assimiliating new information to an ideological position, but I strongly suspect she is less than capabale, and maybe incapable, of subjecting an ideological position to robust examination on the grounds of new information.

That is, I think, the reason why a kind of relentless on-message fluency co-exists with the sense of an emptiness where actual thought might be.  To that extent, she talks to us like a concerned-but-busy mother talking to a 12-year old, where one admits some very limited complexity but basically one just wants the kid to grasp some basic instruction or idea.

I guess the issue for me, subjectively, is that I don't like being talked down to as if I were a 12-year old.  I can actually handle more substance, I don't like too much clichéd folksiness, and I want to talk back.

tomeg... were you watching the same debate as the rest of us?  Palin did perform better as she managed to not constantly stumble all over herself.  However, what did she actually say?  Pretty much nothing.  She gave no facts, no numbers, no analogies, no specifics.  She blurted out words for 45 minutes and said basically nothing with a few exceptions:

*  Managed to call Biden a Liar (About his own recorded votes)

*  Managed to undermine the constitution (As currently written)

There are a few other points but those are the big ones that infuriated me.

We should all encourage the WJS line.

Tomeg, although you're taking something potent that I cannot recognise - or you are just enamoured of the Palin because she reminds you of Liza in "Arrested Development" - I also think that your line of thinking should be standard speaking point for all Democrats.  Yes, Liz- I mean, Sarah is a formidable politician; she should give more interviews and appear in fewer structured speeches ... right, exactly, dead on.

Except that, Sarah, like so many totalitarian dictators before her, prefers to Speak to the People Directly, without the "filter" of the media and, in good time, the Congress.  This is Eva Peron in action, "Don't Cry for me Wa-a-silla, the Truth is, I never left you" ...

"Make no mistake, Sarah is a very smart lady, and a formidable politician."

You're half right, tomeg.

Free Sarah Palin!**

**With purchase of one Original Maverick(tm) of equal or greater value.

Tomeg, she is not a bright woman. She talked a total of about a little more than 35 minutes. I am a College Professor, day in and day out I have to talk in hour blocks. This was not brain surgery on her part, this was cramming for the speech and then giving out the rehearsed lines. She has had years of experience standing in front of people giving speeches as well. I saw no evidence of intelligence, the kind that I would want to see in the White House. McCain is 72, a cancer and torture survivor, his father died at 70, the risk is truly beyond what anyone should want.

God damn it all, where is Tim Russert when you need him?

From your lips to God's ears tomeg.  I hope and pray that the McCain campaign believes as you do.  Unfortunately, I don't think the McCain campaign, as clueless and incompetent as it has been thus far, is as stupid and gullible as you.  "Smart lady!?!"  Are you joking?

Michael is 100% right.  Palin's failure to meltdown during the debate only makes the McCain campaign's task of secreting Palin that much harder.  Now the knuckle-dragers on the right will be clamoring for them to "Free Sarah" as McCain's difficulties with closing the gap with Obama mount.  The McCain campaign better standfast as limit her exposure to controlled settings or she will only add to their difficulty.

I would like to see the moderator take more of a lead in these debates -- asking follow-ups and specifics and pressing the candidates.  (Yes, on both sides.)  The candidates can't do it as freely, because they worry about coming off as mean or condescending or irritiable.  (This is especially true for Biden, who couldn't really press Palin without seeming like a jerk.)

Palin isn't getting better.  It's just that Couric has been pressing her.  When you ask the spokesmodel to really talk about the car beyond the few talking points she's got memorized, she can't, because she doesn't know anything about cars.

Wandreycer1, wasn't the format also suited for Biden who is ostensibly prone to rambling and to gaffes? Or is that just pundit spin?

Blackton, about a month ago on a different thread someone said that McCain was opportunistic to stay on in the Hanoi Hilton after his captors offered to release him.  I criticized that line of thinking and as McCain said in what I thought was the best part of his convention speech, the Viet Cong worked him over harder afterwards.  However, the psychological after effects of torture must last for decades, till the end of your life, really.  While many come out of terrible events wonderful and stronger people (I'm thinking Elie Wiesel), it would be interesting to know how much of McCain's persona stems from the Hilton, beyond the obvious and honorable opposition to torturing terror detainees.  While I don't want to find out directly I'm sure the Hanoi Hilton would have broken my spirit.

The McCain camp came up with and insisted on the format change, Obama/Biden wouldn't dare. They are men, remember?

What format did Biden initially want?

WSJ is punking you. They are crying "free Sarah!" and if it happens they know full well it will be a horrorshow that will sell papers.

WSJ is punking you. They are crying "free Sarah!" and if it happens they know full well it will be a horrorshow that will sell papers.

I can see an advantage for having her on the ticket.  She can say whatever she wants, people will listen, and no matter what it is, she won't lose any credibility with the American public..

Democrats and Obama supporters do themselves, and the political and mainstream media does the Democrats, a disservice when they attack Palin so consistently and personally, rather than making a full-throated attack on the ideology that she has simply been asked to represent. (And does as good a job of representing as anyone else in her party. Better, in fact, than many.)

Bill Kristol, for instance, who believes and spouts EXACTLY the same kind of nonsense as Palin -- and has been doing so in a variety of influential ways for years --  is rewarded with a column in the NY Times while Palin is mocked in column after column by his colleagues. Why would anyone believe they are really distressed by her ideas and the quality of her intellect rather than simply dismissive of her less elite credentials and class (and, of course, her gender)?  

TNR indulges in non-stop Palin bashing. But on economic issues, Palin as never expressed an opinion much different from those of Andrew Sullivan -- who once edited this rag. Many of her ideas , in fact, are very much in line with another neo-conservative editor, Michael Kelly. Plus, her aptitude for insults aimed at those on the left is almost in the same league.

For most of us, although not apparently for the political media, Palin isn't a problem because she went to the University of Idaho, speaks in a too folksy manner and governs a distant Western state. For us, the problem isn't that she isn't "elite enough" but that she is a "mouth-piece" for too many elite, but dumb and destructive, ideas. Ideas promoted for decades by Harvard and other Ivy educated ideologues like Kristol, Norquist, etc., and supported by media meritocrats like Sullivan, Kelly and their ilk . These elites dumbasses and their ideas have been treated quite respectfully by the media. They are destructive ideas (for the nation at large, although self-serving for the nation's elite) that the same media which now mocks Palin have consistently provided with a respectful platform and helped entrench, in terms of economics especially, as part of the nation's disasterous "common wisdom."