Zhanga: October 3, 2008

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Friday, October 3, 2008 (3 comments)

I had a math exam this morning which I did very poorly on, I got owned pretty badly on a CS quiz, and a TA knocked 2.4 points off my final grade due to a cheating accusation. He eventually dropped the penalty to around 1 point off my final grade, but still, this is probably the most absurd thing I've been accused of at Duke. The group believed that we stayed well within the collaboration guidelines, and at the top of each of our submissions we named, in bigger font than anything else on the page, everybody we worked with. How that could be considered cheating... well, I'm getting off topic, as the topic today is, again, Sarah Palin.

I watched the VP debate last night (Ronjon, if you're reading this, I watched it with Erica Lin among others, so you should be totally jealous right now) and haven't read or heard any commentary on it, so I'm just writing my personal opinion here. Actually, I did hear one headline, but we'll get to that in a second.

I actually thought Palin did a very good job during the debate, though that's partly due to my particularly low expectations of her. The one area she did really disappoint me in, though, was her ability to sound like Miss South Carolina, which would have been really entertaining but (un?)fortunately didn't happen.

Overall, the impression that I got was that she stayed up all night cramming for this one, and did the best she could have hoped for. It's definitely good that she took this seriously, though I'm not sure that makes up for her lack of gray matter. (Tangent: There was an article in The Chronicle today about why these candidates shouldn't have to pander to the population and pretend to be an average Joe. Don't we want our leaders to be smarter than the average citizen?)

She got owned by Joe Biden a couple of times, one of the worst being the response she gave about Obama's 80-ish votes for tax increases which was promptly countered by Biden stating that, by the same standards, McCain voted 477 times for tax increases (keep in mind that one of McCain's major platform issues is fiscal conservativism). I don't believe she even attempted to rebut that. More surprisingly though, and the point I'm getting to, is that I don't think she bombed any responses particularly badly, especially compared to her performance over the past two weeks. I was half-expecting this thing to be a farce where she would be owned repeatedly, but it turned out not nearly that bad. If Sarah Palin were a stock, 9:20 PM would have been a good time to buy. (And before the next debate/interview would probably be a good time to sell.)

I think the one specific thing that she majorly botched was when she said, "...toxic waste on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street." (She transposed the streets.) I believe the conversation went like this:

Jeremy: ¡¿Did she just say that?!
Me: Oh no she di'nt!!

About a minute later was when I heard the one headline relating to the debate: Hanif pulled out his phone, and apparently on CNN.com or somewhere there was already a link on the front page for an article about toxic waste.

Getting to the overall picture, I think Joe Biden definitely won this one. Palin very obviously memorized some lines that highlighted her key points. In back-to-back responses, she twice mentioned her experience as governor, mayor, and "energy and gas regulator" using the exact same phrasing. That wasn't a particularly high point of the debate for her. Plus, she kept wanting to go back to energy on issues that weren't related or were only tangentially related to energy, presumably because she didn't have a script for whatever Biden was trying to argue with her about.

I can't recall the exact questions any more, but there were some cases when she talked about nothing relevant and failed to answer the question. Obviously Biden did this too (he is a politician), but he did it much less, and did a very good job refuting or otherwise responding to pretty much every challenge that Palin made. Palin failed terribly at this, and often did so in such a confusing way that by the time she was done talking, I had already forgotten the prompt. Palin lost major points with me for equivocating and speaking with generalities in pretty much every response, while Biden did much better. I would even venture to say that, compared to most politicians, Biden had a more defined stance and was more straightforward in making them known. For example, his answer about gay rights was very clear and to-the-point, stating that there would be no distinction between gay and straight couples, while Palin fumbled around and said that while she would certainly "tolerate" gays, marriage is between a man and a woman only. "Tolerate"? Ok, so they can have hospital visitation rights, great. What about tax benefits?

One thing that lost credibility with me was the question about campaign promises that would could not be kept. I forgot Biden's answer, but he provided a pretty specific response to what promise he could not keep. On the other hand, Palin talked about nonsense for a while, and then finally answered, in perhaps her most straightforward answer during the entire debate, that there were no McCain or Palin promises that at this point could not be kept. Am I really expected to believe that?

In a response to Palin, Biden said that his wife and daughter died, and he had to take care of his other kids himself, and blah blah, which I think connects with the people well, but at the same time he also made it very clear that these days, he lives in a very nice house and isn't exactly struggling to pay his bills. Contrast this to Sarah Palin, who claimed to be a middle-class hockey mom! Middle-class? Let's be clear: this woman is not "one of us." I don't like that one of her primary selling points is that she's a middle-class hockey mom. I mean, sure it's great if it's true, but (1) it's not, and (2) she emphasizes that way too much and acts as if that's a reason she should be VP. My mom should be VP too.

I probably have more to talk about, but I'll just say one more thing. The maverick thing annoys me to no end. McCain is NOT a maverick. In the debate, Palin again mentioned Biden's tenure in the Senate and experience and said that McCain/Palin stand for change. Hmm, sounds like somebody else's line to me. (Some black guy is going around the country asking for change?)

And finally, I didn't really like Biden before, so I'm not really that biased towards either candidate besides thinking Palin is an idiot. Ok that makes me biased. I do have some issues with Biden, but today I only mention him to compare him with Palin, so we won't go there. In my mind, he won this one pretty soundly, but Palin may have also won by getting back some approval from those who were completely turned off by the recent interviews.

3:53PM

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