It would be hard to overstate the importance of tonight’s debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, even though television commentators will surely try.
Viewership may be higher for these 90 minutes than for any of the face-offs between ticket toppers John McCain and Barack Obama. Plenty of persuadable voters who are sick to death of the maverick and the messiah will be looking for reasons to go one way or the other.
At the outset, both veep choices were defensive picks intended to prove something about the nominees to their skeptical bases.
Picking Palin was indeed the greatest publicity play since PT Barnum brought Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, to these shores. But the selection of Palin was really about proving to the restive right that McCain was their kind of Republican: a socially conservative Christian who disdains the Eastern elite.
With Biden, Obama was looking to reassure blue-collar Democrats that despite his exotic pedigree, he was comfortable with a hail-fellow, Irish-Catholic politician. Mill towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio that went for Hillary Clinton by three-to-one margins were much on Obama’s mind when he chose Jabberin’ Joe.
And in large part, the selections have worked out as the candidates had hoped, despite some obvious bumps along the way.
Plenty of pink Palin stickers are sharing space with metal Jesus fish on SUV bumpers coast-to-coast. And conservatives who feared that McCain was a tool of the media have certainly been disabused of that notion by the near-daily firefights between his campaign and the press.
For the Democrats, if all Joe Biden ever does is lock up eastern Pennsylvania for Obama, he will have made himself plenty useful. It is the reassuring sameness of Biden, who is every inch the old-fashioned politician, which helped take some of the head-prefect gloss off of Obama.
So, having shored up nominees who emerged from their respective primaries with some weak spots in their foundations, Biden and Palin now turn to face each other and a new set of challenges.
With the bases mostly secure, the test now is whether the running mates can expand the appeal of the men atop the tickets with persuadable voters in the center. And unlike second fiddles of years past, Biden and Palin actually have a chance to do so because so many voters want to feel this election offers something new, or at least real.
They know this race is important to the country, but need to know why it’s important to them.
Obama is cool almost to the point of bloodlessness and McCain is hot almost to the point of incoherence. As the past week has shown, there is little either man can say to change voter’s minds. They have become stereotypes, no longer real people.
But Palin and, to some extent, Biden, still aren’t wholly formed in the national consciousness. By this time Friday, they will be.
For Biden, his job is to explain to voters how he and Barack Obama will keep the country safe in an unsafe world. Just as Dick Cheney had to do in 2000 when running with the governor of Texas, Biden must cast a fatherly figure: trusted, tough, and wise. Someone who will make sure that Obama is not taken unawares in this ugly world of ours.
Palin is no foreign policy wizard and should do little more than remind people what a tough old bird John McCain is.
If she tries to prove that she is Biden’s equal on foreign affairs, Palin will look unprepared and haughty. Rather, Palin should have a cogent understanding of McCain’s policies and acknowledge her own inexperience. That way she will appear humble and reasonable, not like the loser of the latest round of stump the candidate.
Palin needs to connect with voters on a personal, emotional level and prove there is more to John McCain than just a clenched jaw. McCain is seen as neither tender nor compassionate, and Palin has the perfect opportunity on the economy to prove that McCain understands ordinary voters and that she will be their advocate in his administration.
One of Palin’s best moments at the Republican convention came when she talked about her sister’s gas station in Alaska and how an Obama tax increase wouldn’t help her family.
Similarly, in her recent interview with conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt, Palin also scored when she talked about how she and husband Todd struggled early on to pay for health insurance and operate a small business.
Biden should not try to compete in this arena, despite all his talk about his early childhood in Scranton. He and his gleaming teeth and hair have too much of the air of political privilege to seem anything but phony in a poor-mouthing contest with the former Miss Wasilla.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
