Matthew Yglesias gives an uncharacteristically inside-baseball prediction about tomorrow’s debate:
Meanwhile, if you watch Palin’s interviews you’ll see that she’s perfectly capable of parrying an initial question with some nonsense and then shifting to her pre-prepared talking points. What was so devastating about the Katie Couric interview is that Couric would gently – very gently – prod Palin with follow-ups that revealed she doesn’t know anything about anything. But with this cloud of suspicion hanging over her, Ifill will probably treat Palin with kid gloves and she’ll be able to turn in the sort of competent performances she offered on the Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity shows.
That may be how it plays with the decideds, who are either delighted or repulsed by the talking points. But, for most people, the moderator — Ifill — serves as a surrogate or proxie. The questions she asks, she asks on their behalf. Her questions are their questions. She is the person that the undecided audience is going to identify most with.
So, if Palin deflects and declaims, she risks that the undecideds in the audience will view her failure to answer questions as an insult of sorts. They’ll be thinking, “Hey, I’d really like to know the answer to that question.”
My prediction? If Palin indeed avoids answering the question and gets into packaged attack mode, the pundits will award her points for “hitting themes,” but they’ll learn that the audience found her slippery and evasive.
I think there has been a long period in which a politician could get away with evading talking about big issues in a debate; hit the talking points, seem folksy, and come out with a “win”. The difference is that things are so precarious — if not outright dire — that by and large people genuinely do want to hear a real attempt at answering the questions.
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p>I watched the Obama/McCain debate uneasily, mostly feeling that McCain had punchier anecdotes and a “tougher” persona. I kinda though Obama seemed weaker. Apparently, the polls show that they thought Obama was dignified and made better points. So I was thrilled to be wrong in my apprehension.
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p>What I think this says is that the pundits and media-folk are actually more interested in the figure-skating elements than jes’ folks; even though ostensibly those media-folk are only fixated on the figure-skating because they think that’s all that jes’ folks notice.
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p>So maybe this year is different … I do NOT think that Palin will be able to pull what she did with Gibson and Couric, and somehow get away with it. And I also don’t think Biden should restrain himself to the point of not acknowledging the obvious, if in fact she turns out to be utterly lost at sea.
From the movie “Thank you for smoking”. “I don’t have to prove I’m right, I just have to prove you wrong”. Joe has an hour and a half, thats enough time to show what a buffoon he is.
in a discussion about the Palin – Biden debate, you choose Biden as the likely ‘buffoon’. I do believe that says something about you, Bill.
In fact, though he was not one of the three Democrats who were polling the best, he was very often declared the one who did the best, because his answers reflected of the depth and breath of his experience.
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p>The other thing, as all the analysts are saying, it is Palin who has something to prove. Many are arguing that Biden simply needs to play it very safe. No matter how hard the right wing has tried, polling suggests that they have not succeeded in making Biden’s ability to be President an issue. In the Washington Post/ABC poll, of people polled between 9/27 and 9/29, 70% said that Biden had the kind of experience it takes to serve effectively as president, if that became necessary; where only 35% said Palin did. Worse yet, this was down from 47% – from 9/5 to 9/7. In the current poll, 60% of the country don’t think she is ready. Given McCain’s age and what is known of his health, it was said before the VP pick, that his choice would be unusually important – so this 60% should be keeping Republicans up at night. (Link to poll – http://pollingreport.com/wh08.htm – scroll down to the VP questions.)
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p>Palin has to completely redeem herself, Biden merely has to avoid a huge mistake – and he made no even moderate size mistakes in all the Democratic primary debates.
Lehrer was such a fabulous moderator. He challenged both sides to explain further. Plus the two minutes and 5-minute rebuttal discussions was one of the best formats I have ever witnessed on a national debate.
It really worked very well and got the greater depths on the disagreements the candidates had. It also showed that both campaigns thought their candidates knowledge and skill as debaters was high.
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p>Imagine if that were the format in 2004. It might have been the closest thing to Bush actually having to answer questions at a hearing.