Veep Debate: Palin Flies, Biden Lies, Obama Wins

This was a nice prelude to the Palin-Biden smackdown.  Where the hell has this summer's McCain advertising touch been?:

Alas, Slow Joe didn't out any of Barracuda's gay relatives (if she has any), or boorishly sigh and grimace alot, or try to physically intimidate the moosehunter, or check his watch conspicuously, or walk on stage wearing a pink pantsuit and Hillary Clinton Halloween mask.  He didn't even ask moderator Gwen Ifill to stand up on her broken ankle so the audience could applaud her brazen conflict of interest, God love her.  Personally, I was crushed.

Oh, not too much.  You can't have Senator Rogaine gum-flapping for any significant length of time and not get an avalanche of "verbal imprecision".  J-Ger had the roundup; highlights lie below, encapsulated:

"Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. He has — he has — the idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the executive — he works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that."

Actually, the entire Constitution only defines a single role for the vice president: as president of the Senate (That's the Legislative Branch, Joe), with only a tie-breaking vote.  Which leaves a lot of room for solitaire-playing, unless the president gives his/her veep other duties beyond that meager portfolio.  I'm guessing that's why the vice presidency has earned its unprestigious reputation over the years.  I'm also guessing that the "other duties" Big Time was given, and his effectiveness at carrying them out, are what Slow Joe was told to say are "dangerous".

But....did "everybody understand" his civics gaffe?  Probably not.

Biden said that the U.S. spends more in Iraq in one month than it has in Afghanistan in six or seven years.

That figure is off by 2000%.

This one's not too difficult to figure out even on the back of a cocktail napkin.  However, I've never been convinced that this "Afghanistan over Iraq" argument has ever been much of a traction-getter in any case.

Biden: When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said, and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there.  Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Ya got me on this one.  Hezbollah RUNS Lebanon, both de jure and de facto.  They fought a war against Israel from there just two years ago.  And I'm having a devil of a time remembering Biden, or Barack, or any Democrat, or anybody PERIOD in Washington thumping the tub for a NATO intervention in Lebanon on Israel's side to kick the Hezbos back into Syria.

Of course, what THAT idea coming out of Greasy Joe's smirking maw DOES remind me of is a reprise of the 1983 Beirut "multinational peacekeeping" deployment that made a contingent of U.S. Marines into potted plants and got 241 of them killed at the hands of....Hezbollah.

"Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this Administration has made them better off in the last eight years."

Actually, Katie's Restaurant went tits-up....during the Clinton administration.  I guess Barry & Joe are still working on sending Home Depot to the same fate.  But unless you live in the neighborhood Slow Joe claims to, how would you know that?

"Number two, with regard to arms control and weapons, nuclear weapons require a nuclear arms control regime. John McCain voted against a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty that every Republican has supported."

"Every Republican" other than the other forty-nine that voted with McCain, actually.  But, to borrow a Barackism, that was too "inside baseball" for the vast majority of viewers to pick up on.

To borrow a Clubber Lang-ism, Team Sith "gotta lotta mo" here, and Geraghty adds a couple of more here.  But none of the other examples differ markedly from those above.  It was incurable senatitis on display for ninety minutes.  It was Slow Joe being Slow Joe.  It was pretty much what viewers were expecting.

But in the most strategic sense, Biden succeeded in carrying out his core mission: blame George W. Bush (and therefore John McCain), the GOP, conservatism, and free-market economic policies for the Democrat-created Wall Street Meltdown that has doomed the country to a significant recession at best, and...well, let's not think about the worst right now, shall we?  Or, rather, reinforce that impression that the Dems have already bored into the public's collective consciousness unopposed by any "straight talk" from the "Original Mavericks".

Why have I spent so many keystrokes going on and on and on about Joe Biden when seventy five million Americans obviously did not tune in to navigate his verbal diarrhea?  Isn't it obvious?:

Of course, Sarah Palin exceeded expectations.  She accomplished that by not flying to the wrong city for the debate.  She accomplished that by not forgetting to put on her skirt before she emerged from behind the curtain.  She accomplished that by not having a tennis shoe on one foot and a dominatrix stiletto heel on the other.  She accomplished that by not falling off the stage (Hey, it's more than Bob Dole managed twelve years ago).  She accomplished that by not drooling on her podium, dribbling mustard on her top, and then bursting into tears and fleeing at the first question.  There was no earthly way the Alaska Governor COULDN'T have exceeded expectations after the past month of being sequestered in solitary confinement by Team Sith other than the two Enemy Media ambushes they sent her into.

Was that the strategy?  Did the McCainiacs have so little confidence in Palin that they deliberately set out to lower expectations to subterranean levels so that they could spin whatever debate performance she produced as a "home run"?  Weren't they paying attention to her f'ing convention speech?  Sheesh, if Maverick thinks that little of her, why did he pick her in the first place?  And given the Palinmania that ensued, why in God's name was she sequestered?

Just to explicitly answer the rhetorical question above, seventy-five million people tuned into the veep debate to see which Sarah Palin would show up: the Thatcheresque figure who wowed the country and electrified the GOP base in Minneapolis, or the Moonshine McJugs of ABC's and CBS's highly edited depiction.  Last night they got their emphatic answer.

Will it be a game-changer?  Nope.  That was settled on the third question:

IFILL: Who's to blame for subprime crisis?

BIDEN: Obama warned.  McCain "surprised."  Overwhelming deregulation.  Obama was talking about regulation.  John calling for deregulation.

PALIN: Predator lenders. Knock at Wall Street.  We have to demand strict oversight.  Admonition on debt, and living outside of our means. Personal responsibility as well.

And there goes the last chance to save the election.

I will say this again: the financial crisis is a DEMOCRAT scandal, created by DEMOCRAT policies, exacerbated by DEMOCRATS at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and protected by DEMOCRATS in Congress.  Sarah Palin spoke of "personal responsibility" and yet ducked assigning that very thing to the people actually responsible for laying waste to the financial sector - just like her running mate did a week ago.  Indeed, she went out of her way to emphasize her ticket's obsession with BIpartisanship, even after what the Democrats did to Maverick last week and to House Republicans this past Monday:

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. …

No, in fact, when we talk about the Bush Administration, there’s a time, too, when Americans are going to say, “Enough is enough with your ticket,” on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers, and doing the blame game. …

But for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there’s just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that’s where you’re going.

Some may consider those sentiments to be admirable.  Right now what they are is, to be bending-over-backwards charitable, vastly premature.  A few years from now, after Obamanomics has cut the Dow in half and we're in an intractible depression and suffering mass-casualty terrorist attacks every month, it'll be a bit harder for Rogaine Messiah to keep blaming Bush for all that woe, even with the Enemy Media as their propaganda arm.  But now?  Bush is still in office, and the Democrats and EM have convinced most Americans that the credit crunch is the result of NOT ENOUGH GOVERNMENT CONTROL, not the Dems declaring home ownership to be an entitlement and then outsourcing it as a welfare program to Wall Street as an unfunded mandate.  That redounds to the benefit of Barack Obama, not John McCain.  Biden's answer reflected that perception; Palin's answer was populist nonsense.

There's an old axiom that teaches that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even pull its boots on.  In this case, the truth has been chloriformed, bound, gagged, and locked in a closet even by the campaign that should be shouting it from the rooftops.  Without it, the Wall Street Meltdown will be merely the downpayment on even worse economic and foreign policy calamities that not even Palinmania will be able to overcome.