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Up for DebateEmily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick take readers' questions about tonight's vice-presidential face-off.

Posted Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008, at 4:46 PM ET

(Continued from page 2)

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Dahlia Lithwick: wow

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Long Island, N.Y.: With the success of the media campaign to set expectations so low for Palin and so high for Biden, is it possible for Palin to lose and/or Biden to win? Feels like a brilliant set up to me.

Emily Bazelon: Yes I hear you. It's hard to imagine that Palin won't exceed expectations. If she strings together coherent sentences, she'll go a ways toward putting to rest the painful, grimacing silences in her TV interviews. It'll be up to us to remember that crossing a very low bar doesn't mean winning. I don't think, though, that Biden loses if Palin simply doesn't fall on her face. It's more that anything like a tie will seem like a victory for her. Unless we remember not to grade on a curve.

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Montreal: I was excited to see maybe some personality, some mud-slinging, some cringe-worthy awfulness. "Like watching two children play with a loaded gun," as Millbank put it earlier. But it actually is going to be vapid, substanceless and mind-numbingly boring, isn't it? Two people stiffly trying to avoid saying anything. I'm right, aren't I?

Emily Bazelon: What a disappointment that will be! I'm holding out for a classic moment or two. Otherwise, it'll be hard to stay awake!

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Bloomfield, N.J.: I think Palin's assumed strategy of glittering generalities will work. Why? Because it worked last week for McCain. Time and again he repeated his talking points, even directly after Obama reasonably—and at length—defused and parried them. Could it be that Palin was picked specifically because she's so good at charging ahead with the canned reply, regardless of what the question was?

Dahlia Lithwick: Bloomfield. Hiya. Why is it you think McCain's "glittering generalities" worked? The post debate polling I saw suggested Obama was the winner. You are right that the qualities Palin has brought to her scripted speeches and prior debates—folksiness, narrative, zingers, etc—probably appealed to the McCain camp when they picked her. But I can't help but feel that they misjudged the mood of the country (or perhaps more fairly, didn't plan on the financial crisis?) People are too freaked out for glittering generalities just now. And especially generalities of the Palin variety in which she uncorks the same soundbytes over and over in response to a multitude of questions. The generalities lose some of the glitter with use, and start to sound a little shopworn. But maybe thats my own in-the-tankness speaking . . .

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Philadelphia: I'm curious about what you think Ifill's strategy should be for the debate. Many have said that part of Couric's effectiveness is that as a woman questioning a woman, she canceled the gender bias noise around Palin. Ifill is also a woman (obviously—and a fantastic one at that), but the dust-up about her upcoming book suggests that the McCain camp is attempting to insinuate that racial bias will cancel out gender neutrality here. I don't think Ifill should have to shift whatever her gameplan is, but do you think she will? And if so, how?

Dahlia Lithwick: So far it looks to me that Ifill has kept her cool over this flap, treating it with some mild amusement and not much else. And it would have been a much bigger flap if folks hadnt known about the book for a while now. The worst kind of umbrage depends on an invented gotcha moment. That said it will be hard for Ifill not to be aware that her neutrality is being loudly disputed in some corners. I wish there were some deft way for her to acknowledge it and move on. Mostly I imagine she will be the pro that she is tonight. And I hope she won't falter on the followups.

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Chicago: It's a little late in the season to be asking this, but every time I see or hear Palin, I wonder why it's not Kay Bailey Hutchison or another qualified woman. Is there really a lack of strong conservative women, or is there something about Palin that I—and much of the rest of the country—is missing?

Emily Bazelon: There are other strong conservative women who McCain could have picked, though I don't think he had a list the length of an arm to choose from. I wonder, though, whether Palin beat out the rest precisely because of some of the qualities that now seem like potential liabilities, not with the Republican base, but with other voters. She's perky. She's unthreatening. She's Puritan sexy, per this piece. And whether you like her or not, she's a fresh face. And she also has deep resonance among Christian conservatives. Rightly, I think, they take her as proof that John McCain means it when he says that he'll do things like appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Sam Alito.

When you frame Palin that way, she does offer a pretty unique set of attributes. Several months ago our colleague John Dickerson predicted her as VP choice as a process of reverse-engineering. Input a) Republican woman 2) pro-life 3) executive experience 4) Washington outsider 5)conservative bona fides and the output is Sarah Palin.

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Arlington, Va.: It seems that the way to shake up Palin is to put her off the carefully and narrowly crafted track the handlers put her on. Can Biden do this and not come off looking bad himself? If so, how?

Dahlia Lithwick: I really do think Biden will disserve himself if he sees his role as throwing Palin off tonight. I think he needs to let Palin shake herself up or alternatively to just look smart. He should act like he is debating a very smart fig tree and mostly just ignore her. I know its not very vice-presidential but the alternative will be to look like a bully.

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Detroit: During the primaries, I supported Hillary Clinton (FYI, I am a man). I received a lot of eye-rolls and/or looks of disbelief from my meat-and-potatoes male friends (Republicans and Democrats)—they just couldn't believe I would support "her." Now those same friends don't have near the same level of distaste for Sarah Palin, even though they think she is unqualified for this nomination. Have you experienced similar differences in perceptions of Hillary and Palin? Do you think physical appearance is a contributing factor? I do—and I think many men always will judge accomplished females, at least partly, through that filter.

Emily Bazelon: My own sense is that you're right, Palin's physical appeal is pulling in male voters. That's what I take from those Palin Is A Fox posters. I'd like to think that your friends had thought-out policy reasons for dissing Hillary and embracing Sarah. They think McCain-Palin are right on the war, on cutting taxes for the wealthy, etc. Or at least that those issues are what the choice will come down to for them in the end, come November.

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Fredericton, New Brunswick: Yes we care up here, 'cause when housing slumps in the U.S. sawmills close in Canada! Are there safe words males like me can use to describe what we don't like about Sarah Palin in blunt terms, and the narrow- or shallow-minded politics she represents, without coming off as a bully, sexist pig or dinosaur?

Dahlia Lithwick: Hi Fredericton. I'd stick to words like "unprepared" and "parochial" in describing Gov. Palin and stay away from references to lipstick or pitbulls. You can probably infuse new meaning into the debate we are having down here about hockey moms. My sister in law is a hockey mom in Ottawa. I gather that largely means preparing pureed foods . . .