Call me a cockeyed optimist or a fool or whatever, but I predict Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be the clear winner over Sen. Joe Biden in tonight’s debate between the vice-presidential nominees. Not because I think she’s a master debater – though she clearly has been underestimated in this department before – but because she possesses the one qualification nobody else on either ticket has – She’s not part of the Washington crowd.
I see four reasons to conclude that everything is in place for a Palin win. First, with the notable exceptions of the Gibson and Couric interviews and four questions at the UN, she’s been kept out of the media since her dazzling GOP convention speech. That has encouraged the Kommentariat to believe their own press releases claiming that she’s really a light weight who will be completely out of her league on tonight’s stage.
Some of the saner heads in the Obama high command had second thoughts about this strategy earlier this week, so we’ve seen a spate of stories from their media allies noting how well Palin did in her numerous debates while running for governor in 2006. But those are too late because the Obama Corps in the Mainstream Media has effectively set the narrative with Palin as the impossibly shallow outsider. That is a narrative they will regret.
Second, the revelation yesterday that debate moderator Gwen Ifill has a book coming that imminently qualifies her for a command position in the Obama Corps adds to Palin’s weapons. All Palin has to do to remind the audience that Ifill is anything but an impartial moderator is to winsomely express hope that the PBS commentator will remember to include both sides about Obama in her book, including _________, etc. etc. etc.
Third, there is the fact Palin’s enemies still don’t understand her appeal, a fact that will likely be reflected in Ifill’s questions. They can’t because everything the Left hates about Palin – her pro-life and pro-energy views, her devotion to “my guy,” why she stood up against a corrupt Alaska GOP establishment, her articulate walk of the traditional virtues – are reasons why Middle America has taken so enthusiastically to her.
I’m even told by a friend who writes for the Brit press about American politics that they can’t get enough of Palin in the UK. Clearly, the woman has a way of connecting with people at cultural, logical and emotional levels that are beyond the comprehension of those who view the world through the very red lenses of the Left. Whatever the Kommentariat says in the post-debate analysis (count on it being favorable to Biden), I expect the popular verdict to be pro-Palin.
Finally, there is the fact that the debate is being held tonight, on the eve of the second vote by the House on the Paulson-Dodd-Pelosi Wall Street bailout proposal. The Senate approved a massively larded-up version of the bill last night, a version that John McCain, Joe Biden and Barack Obama all supported.
The bailout remains massively unpopular and viewed by many Americans as a crude hustle by the political elites who want to use tax dollars to bail out their rich and generous friends in the Wall Street elite. Only Palin can credibly argue that whatever one’s views about the particulars of the bailout, it is clear Washington needs new energy, new faces and new ideas to reform it.
Events could prove me wrong, of course, and I confess to having thought for many years that Dan Quayle got a bum rap from the Mainstream Media in 1988. But let’s not forget who gave one of the worst keynote speeches in American political history – Bill Clinton to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Four years later, he was elected president.
A poor performance onstage will be damaging for John McCain, to be sure, but, barring the most extreme miscue, I think tonight will be the first of many appearances by Sarah Palin on the national political stage, no matter how she performs against Joe Biden, Gwen Ifill, the Kommentariat and Talking Heads.
Those faint-of-heart should listen to Hugh Hewitt’s interview of Palin earlier this week, read Patrick Ruffini’s latest analysis of McCain’s slide in the polls and check out The Washington Post profile of Palin today, including the incident in which this woman took the controls of a fishing commercial fishing boat in a storm. Not only does this woman have guts, she’s got cojones, too.
Okay, maybe I exxaggerate a little. But then there’s that time the grizzly bear climbed in the Palin family car ….
