Republican Vice Presidential candidate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden  took part in the highly anticipated Vice Presidential debate October 2, 2008 at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

The debate was moderated by PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, who had been considered a controversial and inappropriate choice by some Republicans because of her forthcoming book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization was the organizer and sponsor of the VP debate. Now in the aftermath of the debate there is only one question at the forefront: Who won the VP debate? And, of course, how did Sarah Palin do?

Gov. Sarah Palin used a steady grin, folksy manner and carefully scripted talking points to punch politely and persist politically at the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night, turning in a performance that her rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., sought to undermine with cordially delivered but pointed criticism.

If the issues and positions were familiar to many viewers — on taxes and the economy, energy and oil, gay marriage, Iraq and Afghanistan — it was Ms. Palin’s debut in a nationally televised debate that made for unusual theater. And Ms. Palin, a former small-town mayor, was unlike any running mate in recent memory, using phrases like “heck of a lot” and “Main Streeters like me” to appeal to working-class and middle-class voters who feel abandoned by Washington.

Mr. Biden, a six-term senator who has twice sought the presidency, remained forceful and composed against an opponent who proved difficult to attack, given that she is a newcomer and a female face in an arena long dominated by men.

Focusing his attacks on the Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, Mr. Biden only occasionally lost patience with Ms. Palin’s debating tactics, like when she used Mr. Biden’s words against him.

In the only vice-presidential debate of the campaign, at Washington University in St. Louis, Ms. Palin exceeded expectations in this highly anticipated face-off, though those expectations were low after she stumbled in recent television interviews. She succeeded by not failing in any obvious way. She mostly reverted to and repeated talking points, like referring to Mr. McCain as a “maverick” and the Republican ticket as a “team of mavericks,” while not necessarily quelling doubts among voters about her depth of knowledge.

Instead Ms. Palin stressed her down-home qualities and her membership in the middle class, which she and Mr. Biden sparred over repeatedly during their 90-minute encounter.

“Go to a kids’ soccer game on Saturday and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy?’ ” Ms. Palin said. “And I’ll betcha you’re going to hear some fear in that parent’s voice, fear regarding the few investments that some of us have in the stock market — did we just take a major hit with those investments?”

Mr. Biden, standing at a lectern a few feet from Ms. Palin’s, replied with one of his characteristic strategies in the debate: portraying Mr. McCain as unaware or unmoved by voters’ problems and as an ally of the deeply unpopular President Bush.

“It was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o’clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong,” Mr. Biden said. “Eleven o’clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn’t make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he’s out of touch. Those folks on the sidelines knew that two months ago.”

Rarely has a vice-presidential showdown been packed with such political importance. Ms. Palin’s unsteady performances in recent interviews turned this debate into can’t-miss television, but they have also raised questions — from conservatives, among others — about the soundness of Mr. McCain’s judgment in picking a relative newcomer as his running mate. Recent polls have suggested that his shifting statements on the economic bailout talks in Washington have not reassured some of these conservatives, raising the stakes for Ms. Palin to deliver steady, informed answers and repartee in the debate.

Mr. Biden’s aides had their own concerns before the debate, worrying that a single gaffe by him could shift the onus off of Ms. Palin. They worried that even the slightest miscalibration of his tone, body language and mien could imply condescension or worse toward Ms. Palin and become the story of the night.

With both candidates keeping their cool and addressing each other politely with honorifics — Mr. Biden said “Sarah Palin” at one point and then correct himself with “Governor Palin” — there was a certain symmetry to the debate.

Both candidates have a son preparing to serve in the Iraq war. Every time Mr. Biden seemed to criticize Mr. Bush, Ms. Palin would mention “mavericks.” And when Mr. Biden criticized the Bush administration at one point, Ms. Palin replied: “Say it ain’t so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backwards again.”

Source: Palin and Biden Are Cordial but Pointed

 Sarah Palin looked as though she prepared for her appearance at the vice presidential debate last night by studying Tina Fey’s impressions of her on “Saturday Night Live.” She twinkled and winked and piled on the perkiness, a “darn right” here and an “I’ll betcha” there.

The challenge to Fey, who is scheduled to play the Alaska governor and Republican candidate again on the next “SNL” broadcast, will be to out-Palin Palin, to make the parody more amusing than the original.

At the same time, Palin seemed determined to banish thoughts of her as air-headed and inexperienced; she was really debating her own public image rather than Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. She subverted the whole purpose of the exercise by merely repeating the key points of her running mate, Sen. John McCain, and ignoring questions that called for more specific answers.

Source: Palin Outdoes Herself, You Betcha

Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign.

It was not a tipping point for the embattled Republican presidential ticket, the bad night that many Republicans had feared. But neither did it constitute the turning point the McCain campaign was looking for after a weeks-long stretch in which Senator Barack Obama seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the race. Even if he no longer has to be on the defensive about Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain still faces a tough environment with barely a month until the election, as he acknowledged hours before the debate by effectively pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a Democratic state where Mr. McCain’s advisers had once been optimistic of victory.

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. “But this alone won’t change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states.”

Short of a complete bravura performance that would have been tough for even the most experienced national politician to turn in — or a devastating error by the mistake-prone Mr. Biden, who instead turned in an impressively sharp performance — there might have been little Ms. Palin could have done to help Mr. McCain.

Source: In Debate, Republican Ticket Survives One Test

Photo credit: Reuters, Getty Images North America

See also:

• Transcript: Vice Presidential Debate
• Live Blog: St. Louis Showdown
• Live-Blogging The Veeps

Palin Biden VP Debate video October 2, 2008 (full-length video)



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Video & Photos: Sarah Palin Joe Biden 2008 Vice Presidential Debate 10-2-08 [Full Video]




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