Published: October 04, 2008 10:06 pm         

Palin

Debate strategy pays off

Let’s face it. Last week’s vice presidential debate was all about Republican Sarah Palin.

Her Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, was almost an after-thought. Many Americans had seen him debate during the Democratic presidential primaries, and they knew what to expect.

Palin, on the other hand, was a bit of a mystery.

Folks had seen her performance in some recent interviews, and they weren’t really sure how she would do. Frankly, a lot people were expecting to see her fall flat on her face.

She did nothing close to that. In fact, she performed remarkably well, no doubt hitting nearly every point she had hoped to make during the appearance. She was confident and even a bit brash.

Her strategy was simple. Rather than address the questions tossed her way by moderator Gwen Ifill, Palin stuck to her talking points.

“And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear,” she told the audience at one point. “But I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.”

It was, in many ways, a brilliant strategy. It allowed her to deliver the same sort of stump speech she had delivered during the Republican National Convention, speaking directly to her audience about the bread-and-butter issues they care about.

What the debate didn’t provide was a clear picture of what sort of president Sarah Palin would make should John McCain be unable to finish his term.

She showed herself to be an able speaker with a gift for connecting with her audience, but she didn’t demonstrate a firm grasp of the issues that will be facing the country’s next president.

In the end, the debate probably didn’t sway many voters. The folks who liked Palin before the debate probably still liked her when it was over. Those who didn’t probably didn’t change their minds.

Most of the pundits scored the debate as a win for Biden on substance, Palin on style. Still, given the expectations going in, that was a clear win for McCain-Palin.

Had she performed as badly as her critics had predicted she would, the presidential race would have been all but over. By holding her own, Palin kept Republicans’ hopes alive. She lived to fight another day.