Quick take on the VEEPs

I channeled my inner Kennedy/Nixon tonight and listened to the Biden-Palin debate on the radio. I thought Biden was his usual substantive self, without some of the tendencies that get him into trouble, i.e. being too folksy, stumbling into the dreaded gaffe. Palin, well, she was...Palin. They were letting her be Palin. What we got was this:

a) Reruns of Ronald Reagan. She kept summoning RR, with quotes about America being a shining city on a hill, with the old line "there you go again," and with the classic mantra, "government isn't a solution, it's the problem."

b) More of the same old, same old. She openly declared herself an American exceptionalist, someone who believes America is on a special mission, can go it alone and is not subject to criticism, and supported the exceptionalist(read: unilateral, aggressive and unresponsive to criticism)foreign policy of GW Bush.

c) The oldest student trick in the book. Palin answered any question she found distasteful by in effect answering the question she WANTED to focus on. She reminded me of me when I got a question in undergrad on the l8th-century in my Russian literature final, and I didn't want to write on the l8th century, because it was boring, so I wrote on the early l9th. There were slightly higher standards in operation in that classroom, so i did not get passed on to the next phase of the campaign and congratulated on my poise and pluck, i got...a C, since i flunked that part of the exam.

I was, uh, pretty underwhelmed by this must-see TV, and felt generally that Governor Palin was stuck in the l980s somehow. oh, and I heard the sound of breaking glass every time she used the n word: NUCLEAR--she pronounces it exactly the same way as our compulsive mountain-biking President!!