Sarah and Joe

When the bar is set extremely low, it's pretty easy to go over. Thus is the analysis of last night's debate between Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden. It started off well, with Sarah sotto voce, "May I call you Joe?", which I liked, until halfway through the debate when I realized it was merely a ploy to use her"Say it ain't so, Joe" line. I'd love to know how many people she appealed to with that line-I'm will to bet quite few people didn't get it. Did they say anything of substance? Well, I was glad to see Biden making the point that McCain would tax health benefits from your job, something that has never been done before. And I think he proved he was capable of debating a woman without being condescending-he treated her as an equal, although, intellectually speaking, she is not. As a commenter on Gawker said (was it Pope John Paul Peeps?) said, he treated her well, even though it was beneath his dignity to debate this box of cornflakes. Was she flaky? Honestly, I was switching between the debate and episode of Supernatural (which was REALLY good) and every time I flipped her on, it was "maverick this" and "maverick that", oh it was annoying. I didn't really hear her say anything, except the Say it ain't so, Joe and that she would like to expand the powers of the Vice-Presidency, which, if I'm not mistaken, is contrary to McCain's promise that he would nominate Supreme Court justices that would strictly interpret the Constitution. Can you strictly interpret the Constitution to expand the powers of the VP? Now that I think about it, you can-all you have to do is bypass the Supreme Court-but the Bush Administration has expanded the powers of the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency and while I'm sure they are very glad with all their power, it has not worked out well for the American people while they've been trampling all over the Constitution. Biden proved himself to be an intelligent, thoughtful person, while Palin proved herself to be a loyal McCain follower-one who was more than capable of following her script, which she looked at often. It will be interesting to see if this makes any difference to those who have not yet made up their minds.