Tonight’s Debate: Opportunity for Sarah Palin to Change the Dynamics of the Campaign

the mainstream “news” media has created the perception that she’s really not up for the job of Vice President

Biden shows that his experience hasn’t led him to make sound judgments. I’d say having the right judgment is more important than being able to answer Jeopardy questions.

What politician doesn’t fail “gotcha” moments? Biden has a long paper trail of saying stupid things and getting basic facts wrong; yet it’s Palin who is under the media scrutiny to flub something as evidence of her being unfit for command.

I also question the foreign policy experience of someone like a Biden (again, wrong on everything). As Thomas Sowell puts it:

Senator Joe Biden’s years of service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is even further removed from foreign policy experience. He has had a front-row seat as an observer of foreign policy. But Senator Biden has never had any real experience of making foreign policy and taking the consequences of the results.

The difference between being a spectator and being a participant, with responsibility for the consequences of what you say and do, is fundamental.

You can read books about crime or attend lectures by criminologists, but you have no real experience or expertise about crime unless you have been a criminal or a policeman.

Juan Cole and Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have “a lot of experience” in the study of history. But their conclusions, perspective, and “lessons learned” from all their years of study are whacked out. Being an expert means something; but it doesn’t qualify one into automatically having sound judgment.

Palin has proved she is an empty dress. Blame the media if you want, call them gotcha questions if you want, but she is dangerously uninformed. She needs to leave the ticket or McCain will loose.

Tonight’s debate does have greater potential to move the race more than any other Vice Presidential debate has. My hunch is it will not. It seems the more hyped an event like this gets, the more it just turns to meh.

I am very optimistic for tonigh. First of all, this will be the most air-viewed debate in History. Everybody is interested in Palin, whether they like her or not. She creates excitement.

I think we are in for a big surprise, one that nobobody is expecting… a total surprise of mavericks. Sarah Palin will be authorised to be Sarah Palin tonight. What the heck? Republicans have nothing to lose if you look at Obama’s polls. So it will be a kind of a “sudden death” debate. She will come in as a Barracuda and a Pittbull… people will be stunned completely and the election will take another direction. The McCain/Palin ticket will win this election brilliantly, it will be a landslide election. Those are my predictions for tonight’s debate.

Well, I watched the debate. I’m biased towards the Republicans instead of the communists, I mean, socialists, no, they still call themselves “Democrats.” Oh, well. I think Sarah was much too nice. She should have come out and gone straight to the jugular. When Biden moaned about McCain voting against the bill to fund the troops that just so happened to have a withdrawal timetable in it she could have noted WHEN that bill was, and if the timetable had passed we’d be out of Iraq, watching chaos unfold. She could have reminded him that the South Vietnamese defeated the Easter 1973 North Vietnamese invasion, and was defeating the 1975 invasion until the Democrats in Congress cut off funding for South Vietnam, which caused the South Vietnamese to lose and directly led to re-education camps, the boat people and the Cambodian killing fields, and asked ever so sweetly if he thought a withdrawal timetable that didn’t take into consideration the actual conditions in Iraq would result in anything other than another blood bath. She should have nailed him on his brilliant idea to partition Iraq. She should have attacked on tax cuts, since taxes aren’t paid by corporations, merely added to the cost of doing business, which raises prices for the lower/middle income Americans.

There are so many things she could have said, and I still hope and pray that enough Americans will see through the facade and realize that Obama bin Biden is wrong for America.

Walter M. Clark