Friday, October 03, 2008

Take five, post-VP debate edition

1. Is there any reason why Joe Biden kept referring to his running mate as "Barack"? Senator is a very impressive title, and you'd think Biden would want to use it as often as possible to give the relatively inexperienced Obama a bit more stature at no cost.

2. Can't say I've ever heard a debate participant say she wasn't going to answer the questions asked by the moderator, and I'm a little surprised Sarah Palin didn't take more heat for it. I had visions of John McEnroe taking over the session and yelling out along the lines of his famous sound bite, "ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!"

3. Congratulations to Biden for not saying, "Governor, I knew Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle is a friend of mine. And you, Governor...." I think we set a record for low expectations in this debate, and Palin did get over that bar.

4. Wouldn't you have liked to hear a totally honest comment about this election? I'd frame it something like this: "We all know that no one is coming back from Iraq anytime soon, and we all know we're not going to have any money for discretionary spending thanks to the recession. So neither of us are going to be able to do much on Jan. 20. But we will be able to appoint a bunch of Supreme Court justices in the next four years..."

5. When Wall Street's collapse and the government's takeovers took place, I said that barring something unexpected, Obama had this election won. The Bush Administration has had to act like socialists in taking over bad debts, flying in the face of years of support by Republicans for free markets and cutbacks on regulations. How do you square those two positions? Then throw in the standard line in such situations, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" and I'd say I haven't seen anything to change my mind yet from that original prediction.

2 comments:

Becky said...

Neither Palin or McCain answered questions put to them on their respective nights. Must be campaign strategy.

John Fraissinet said...

I think Palin's strategy was to wink Biden to death.