Palin Vs. Biden Debate 03 October 2008

Early this morning, Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. went head-to-head in the one and only vice-presidential-debate. Due to the fact that I was working all night, I was able to watch the debate in its entirety.

Palin did not say anything overtly embarrassing, but then this is not a surprise when she stated early on “…I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear”, and generally refused to say anything of substance for the whole 90-minutes.

Because of her recent disastrous interviews with Katie Couric, where Palin was unable to name any newspapers, and thought that Dick Cheney’s worst act as vice president was his “duck hunting accident”, not his shredding the Constitution, vastly inflated powers, and promotion of torture, it was not hard for Palin to come out of this debate at least better than expected. Biden largely focused his attacks on John McCain, not Palin- a wise move lest he be accused of sexism and/or appeared disrespectful of her.

Biden tripped over his words on several occasions, and his longer fact driven answers were somewhat dull for the first half of the debate but he picked up speed in the second half. The rambling, and incoherent non-answers from Sarah Palin gave the impression that she was reading from an invisible teleprompter, relying on memorised phrases and distinctly fact free.

The phoney folksiness of Palin’s presentation, “Joe Sixpack”, “Soccer games on Saturday”, “Hockey moms”, the inability to pronounce ‘nuclear’ correctly, and her shout-out to the “third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School” sounded to my British ear as crass, pandering, and just not appropriate to someone in the running to be a heartbeat away from the Presidentship.

My only real concern was the subject of same-sex marriage. Biden said that he supported granting exactly the same benefits to same-sex couples and heterosexual couples.

There will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple. The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted - same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance polices et cetera.

He then made a slight misstep by needlessly inserting the word “marriage” into his answer, allowing Palin to claim that hospital visitation rights for gay couples can sometimes lead to a redefinition of marriage. This led to the awkward reaffirming that ‘no’ neither he nor Obama support gay marriage. Sadly this pandering to the Religious Right by not supporting gay marriage muddied the water and Biden’s main point that from a constitutional or legal standpoint there should be no difference between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple. Let us not forget that Gov. Palin’s brand of delusion believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” This is a topic for another day, but let me just say that the Christian faith is a bigoted homophobic organisation, and it’s considerable influence in the policy decisions of both British and American Governments has been a giant step backward into ignorance & superstition, and hampered the progress of humanity for decades to come.

Overall, I thought enjoyed watching that debate, but I would have liked some more probing questions, that would have shown Palin to be the vapid and empty karaoke machine politician she is. Real issues like executive power and violating the constitution were hardly touched.

It seems that Biden carried the night in the polls I’ve seen, (only Fox News gave it to Palin, but that said Palin could have ripped the head off a baby and shat on the moderators desk and Fox News would have still crowned her Queen of the Debate). From a UK point of view, a ‘Who won the US vice-presidential debate?’ poll on the Guardian.co.uk website has 83% to Joe Biden, 17% to Sarah Palin as of Friday evening.

Obviously, I am British and have no state in the US Presidential Elections these are simply the views of an outsider who is shit scared that Palin could be in charge of the superpower.