Well golly gee willickers!  That was a heck of a debate, eh?  Bless their little hearts! 

One of the characters on stage last night reminded me of a female Ned Flanders in overdrive. 

"Hidely-doodly, Gwen!  Joe! Mom! Dad!  And all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School!  You get extra credit for watching the debate!"

Palin, like most charismatic personalities, feeds off the adulation of her fans, but it was surprising to me how flat her performance was without any audience reaction.  Her folksy "Darn right it was the predator lenders!" and "Let's commit ourselves, just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again!" sounded more like pandering than populism without the crowd cheering her on.

There is something tongue-in-cheek about Palin's hockey mom shtick.  Just as country music often winks at its audience's indulgences, and its audience is in on the joke, Palin's "Golly gees" and "dogonits" offer a subversive caricature of folksiness.  I know my share of "folks" and none of them talk like this.  They know it's an act.  People aren't like Sarah Palin without trying to be. 

The subtext is the same as with the worst of contemporary Country & Western:  this is what those East Coast liberals think we're really like so let's really be like this!  That'll show em!  HAW HAW HAW!

The problem with Palin in the context of the Vice Presidential debate is that that act can come out condescending to those who might sympathize with the heartland values she's essentially caricaturing but aren't fully in on the joke.  She was obviously aware of the silliness of some of the things she was saying, and unafraid to show it.  But there are people who take those things seriously, and those are the folks for whom that edge of self-awareness comes off as subtle condescension.

The irony is that the East Coast elites, even conservative ones like David Brooks, don't quite get the joke.  In PBS's post-debate analysis, Brooks praised Palin's "colloquialisms", her "gosh darn its," "the soccer mom, the hockey mom, the Joe Six-Pack, the Main Streeter, sort of the mention of the East Coast."  Her M.O. is utterly transparent to everyone, and this transparency is actually part of it. 

It was the same with George W. Bush.  He introduced class clowning as the ultimate executive privilege.  The jester as king.  One way to cope with crisis is not to take it seriously.  And it works for awhile. It's worked for Bush.  I mean, for Palin to call the use of nuclear weapons "the be-all, end-all of just too many people and too many parts of our planet."  It's comical.  But it demonstrates pretty clearly, the only reason to take Palin seriously is the threat of having to.

Still, even The Evil New York Times, the archimandrite of the east coast liberal media establishment, tipped their hat to her.  Despite never getting "beyond her talking points in 90 minutes, mostly repeating clichés and tired attack lines and energetically refusing to answer far too many questions," they concluded: "she did well."

For a cartoon, sure.

Palin's clever debate tactic of avoiding answering questions by launching into generalities and strung-together catchphrases and cliches took me back to my college days.  Particularly my oral exam in first-year Italian.  I was way overloaded, spending most of my time studying rum, sodomy, and the lash, and while cramming for my final had decided that no matter what question was asked I would launch into a well-rehearsed presentation on Spaghetti Westerns.  Despite the fact that my instructor never brought up the topic, I think I got a C+.  Not bad when you consider I was just hoping to pass.

Palin's cleverest evasion, I thought, came late in the debate, when moderator Gwen Ifill asked if she believed, "as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?" 

Palin answered: Um, OK.  It doesn't matter that Biden could answer the question since we knew he could *yawn*, or that he did (showboater!) — what mattered is that Palin clearly couldn't, but did anyway.  Boy that gal's got character!  Not to mention spunk!

Early reviews are in!

From the crowd at PBS:

DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: "I knew Joe Biden was capable of it. I wasn't sure of Sarah Palin. I thought she was every bit his equal."

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: "There were no major missteps. ... I think Governor Palin came through it far, far better than those around her expected going in."

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian: "There was not a gaffe on either side. And I think both sides were relieved."

RICHARD NORTON SMITH, George Mason University: "I'm not sure this is really a game-changer."

ELLEN FITZPATRICK, University of New Hampshire: "Well, I think it may have been; it may not have been."

The MSM seems to be of a similar opinion, pretty much across the board, despite the fact that all major insti-polls  indicate an obvious and decisive win for Biden.

Peter Canellos of the Globe: "The debate probably didn't help or hurt either ticket."

Howard Fineman of Newsweek: "It is unlikely that it moved the overall horse race numbers."

John Dickerson at Slate: "Regardless of who won or lost, a vice-presidential debate doesn't matter unless it produces a major gaffe. This one didn't."

The media's reluctance to declare a winner and a loser despite clear evidence that most viewers didn't have a problem doing so, may be motivated by nattering classes heartfelt need to provide the proles with a good narrative. 

And I think you'll find that in the coming days, the polls — which indicate that the audience saw through what PaleoReaganite Peggy Noonan praised as Palin's "effective infomercial pitch for charm in politics" and what David Brooks characterized as her "Norman Rockwell moments" — will start to come into line with the mainstream media's narrative. 

But, look on the bright side, dogonit!  We're pretty blessed to witness, right before our eyes, the transformation of mere double standard into doublethink!  These sure are exceptional times, eh!