Behind the lipstick, the pitbull vanishes (Palin’s performance in big debate revealed her emptiness)

[Bluebear]

Andrew Sullivan


The sputtering, ramshackle motor-bike repaired in the back yard that is the Sarah Palin candidacy made a clear decision last Thursday night in her one and only “debate” for vice-president. If she gained enough speed and hurtled forward fast enough, the blur of movement would conceal the lack of any basic knowledge underneath, the absence of any relevant experience, the fathomless ignorance and the pathological lying that have dogged her candidacy so far. And to some extent it worked.

Expectations were so low after a series of comically disastrous TV interviews with Katie Couric that merely not drooling or breaking down in tears would have been a triumph. She rattled off a series of clichés and catch phrases – “say it ain’t so, Joe”, “doggone it”, “Joe Six-Pack”, “hockey moms” – that somehow kept the illusion of her viability on life-support. She was trained as a sportscaster and she won her debates in Alaska by simply breaking all the rules of debate, not answering any direct question and performing a piece of slightly unhinged but definitely riveting one-woman performance art.

In the end she still lost the debate on Thursday. The polling showed that most viewers believed that Joe Biden – much more restrained than usual – won. It may have had to do with Palin answers such as this, responding to Biden’s criticism of the Bush administration’s record in education:

“Say it ain’t so, Joe – there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of schoolteachers. My grandma was, my dad, who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year . . . and here’s a shout-out to all those third-graders at Gladys Wood elementary school – you get extra credit for watching the debate.”...

Maybe in other times, when elections could afford to be about hockey moms and baby daddies, the Palin farce would be received as mere colour in the dry grey of politics.

But as two wars lurch unpredictably forward, as the global economy teeters on the edge of a precipice, as the planet enters unknown and potentially drastic climate patterns, as carbon energy empowers terror and tyranny . . . the Palin pick remains what it always was.

Unserious. And not a little terrifying.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article4880909.ece

[flvegan]

1. I run a pit bull rescue, and Sarah Palin is no pit bull.

She couldn't aspire to carry a pit bull's chew toy.