The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

You, Don't Send Me Flowers

Hating on Homes With Aboveground Swimming Pools

Authentically Fake

Dahlia,

I also agree with you about Sarah Palin being a divider not a uniter. Over the last few days she has been going after Obama in racially coded language in her attempts to link him to '60s-era radical Bill Ayers. I find this dismaying and dangerous. When she says Obama "is not like us," or that he doesn't "share our values," she is signaling to her mostly white audiences that they should be worried and fearful of this guy, who is not only black but also a closet Muslim who hangs out with domestic terrorists. (Read: unpatriotic black militant.) For someone who can't speak with any intelligence, or in a coherent sentence, on the substantive issues, she sure is well-versed in the politics of personal destruction.

As for Rachael's view that Palin's experience might not scream "heartland," but her personality does, I must say I'm doubtful her down home, aw-shucks personality is real. It screams shtick and feels forced. It reminds me of someone who is faking authenticity. I was also amused by how she cited soccer moms like herself worrying about the economy and feeling "fear regarding the few investment that some of us have in the stock market," making it sound as if she is of modest means. And the next day we learn that she and the first dude are worth $1.5 million. Real authenticity does not need to be announced and showcased at every turn. Palin is wearing a flashing neon light saying: "I'm authentic! I'm authentic!"   

As for her now suddenly remembering that golly gee, jiminy cricket she does actually read newspapers, specifically the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Economist,  I guess that would explain her wide-ranging expertise on foreign policy issues.  

Palin and Uniters and Dividers

You're absolutely right, of course, to say that Sarah Palin has been a divider, not a uniter. I didn't see it because I wasn't looking for it. Even though I'm in a bit of a unique situation—I'm geographically planted in Ohio while spending my days virtually on the East Coast—at the end of the day, I'm one of those average folks in Middle America to whom Palin is speaking.

But if we can continue our conversation, I think it's important, while ackowledging the negativity, to ask, what does Sarah Palin have to gain from reaching out to East Coast elites, to the "residents of downtown Seattle" as you write? (And I think we can all agree that no one has ever lost points for running against "Washington insiders," right?) How many votes will that get her? Let's look at the reaction to her nomination. Obama spokesman Bill Burton made fun of the fact she was a small-town mayor (yes, Obama issued his own more tactful statement shortly after). Nancy Pelosi questioned John McCain's judgment. In the days between her debut in Dayton, Ohio, and her convention speech, critics and media members questioned her ability to juggle a campaign and an infant with Down syndrome, made fun of her kids' names, and demanded to see her son Trig's birth certificate. One of my personal favorite reactions came from the day after the speech, when the New York Times' David Carr wrote that before Palin arrived in St. Paul that "there was a lot of sniggering in media rooms and satellite trucks about her beauty queen looks and rustic hobbies, and the suggestion that she was better suited to be a calendar model for a local auto body shop than a holder of the second-highest office in the land" and, later, that "journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin's youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother's hair into place. But to many Americans—including some I talked to in the convention hall—that looked like family church on Sunday, evidence of good breeding and sibling regard." [Emphasis mine.] I give him credit for his candor and for actually seeking out what ol' Joe and Jane Six-Pack thought of that moment, but what on earth can Sarah Palin do or say to win over people who think it's disgusting when a little girl spit-shines her tiny brother's hair, who chuckle about a governor as a "auto body shop" pinup girl? Since the financial crisis has hit, she has spoken to the concerns of all Americans, pointing out that she and her husband can relate because they've taken a hit in their 401(k) and their savings and because they worry about sending their kids to college. But I know you're looking for more from her. That's fair, and it's something the Republicans might regret if they lose this election.

You are also right that Obama gave an incredible speech at the 2004 convention. (His speech on race during the primaries was excellent, too.) I thought it was refreshing and different. But let's not forget that he also felt compelled to tell his wealthy audience at a San Francisco fundraiser that when people in other parts of the country struggle, "they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." Let's not forget that he came to Ohio during the primaries and said he opposed NAFTA and criticized Hillary Clinton for supporting it, only to have an economic adviser reassure the Canadians that Obama wasn't about "fundamentally changing" the agreement. Obama talks of hope and change and uniting us all, but when push comes to shove, he can be just like any other politician, saying what he has to say to get elected.

If Obama wins, I hope he can be transformative, that he can make progress in helping Americans set aside their differences. I'm not such a partisan that I want to endure four years of misery just so the Republicans can take back the White House in 2012. If McCain wins and the "pit bull in lipstick" is down the hall in the West Wing, I hope they can accomplish the same thing. But, just like Palin said in her debate with Joe Biden, that in response to he credit crisis Americans need to step up and stop taking on debt that they can't afford and live within their means, the same goes for our discourse. We're not going to get anywhere, regardless of who's president, as long as we're calling one another Dumbocrats and Rethuglicans. If someone wants to convince me that President Bush is the devil, they shouldn't start out by calling him Chimpy McBushitler. Here in the friendly confines of our little blog, we tend to limit ourselves to healthy and respectful debate, but that doesn't happen everywhere.

Palin: It's Us vs. Them

Dahlia, you've put your finger on the reason my initial enthusiasm for Sarah Palin evaporated the minute she opened her mouth; it isn't her conservatism that rankles, but her bile. (Today, for example, she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country'' because he happened to serve on a charity board on education reform with a '60s radical whose views he has denounced. According to the New York Times story Palin was referencing—and deliberately misrepresenting—"[t]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of [William] Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' ")

We could have disagreed on every issue in the multiverse, and I would still have applauded John McCain's choice of a strong, conservative, pro-life feminist—yes!—who actually walked the walk. But Palin's whole up-your-nose-with-a-rubber-hose presentation—it's us-vs.-them on steroids, really—gives the lie to her talk of bipartisanship. She sells herself as a can-do frontierswoman, but also as the poor-me victim of reporters so mean that they dared ask her what she believes. And her overt contempt for difference makes a joke of her promise to bring all Americans together; her loudest shout-out at the debate wasn't to third graders, but to haters. She bragged that she's such a tolerant person that "I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue'' of gay marriage. But people who really are tolerant of other viewpoints are not quite so painfully aware of their own saintly forbearance; that she finds it worth reporting that she has friends who have friends who might be gay—at least, I think that's what she said—in fact suggests a lack of respect. And except for killing her own meat, she has nothing in common with my grandma.

E.J. Graff Sends in This Post

My apologies, all, for being late with this. I'm en route to San Francisco for the wedding of dear friends—two fabulous and widely, deeply loved women—who've been together for 26 years. (It'll be my first Chinese wedding banquet!!) I dearly hope and pray that California voters will on Nov. 4 see fit to approve their marriage rights—and to say yes to recognizing many more such joyous marriages.

And so thank you, Abby, for noting how odiously Palin used the word tolerant in the debate. When Palin used it to talk about gay folks, she tensed up and all but wrinkled her nose, as if smelling something disgusting. In fact, although she briskly announced that she and Biden agreed, her entire way of answering the same-sex marriage questions were in very careful code that made clear how far apart she and Biden actually are.

I don't have a transcript here, but as I remember it, she carefully said that she wouldn't oppose hospital visitation or "private contracts" but that she opposed "redefining" the "traditional definition" of marriage as between one man and one woman. Now, let's leave aside both the tautology and the simple falsity of that statement; marriage has never been one static thing, but has been constantly shifting to suit each era and class, as I discovered when researching my book What Is Marriage For? More important here, though, is that Biden signaled he would support civil unions, domestic partnership, and possibly some now-banned federal recognitions like allowing an American to sponsor her foreign-born female beloved for immigration, say. (Now they'd have to move to Europe or Canada to stay together.) Most of the developed world, and some underdeveloped parts of the world, now have these interim recognitions. The U.S. anti-marriage movement has used state marriage bans to also try to erase these intermediate statuses—saying that any state recognition of a same-sex pair (even sharing health insurance benefits) is a redefinition of "traditional" (by which they mean "recent" or "conventional") marriage.

Biden was announcing, generously and enthusiastically, his support for these ABM (anything but "marriage") measures. Palin was signaling her opposition to any such things that governments might do to allow two people of one sex to honor their bond—and doing it in a way that only very attentive pro-gay and antigay folks would notice. Very smart. And not very nice for my dear California soon-to-be-newlywed long-coupled friends.

Home Is Where the Heartland Is

Rachael, I think you’ve put your finger on Sarah Palin’s “heartland” problem, but perhaps not in a way for which you will thank me. Accepting your premise that Palin deploys the term not in a geographic sense, but to express her “experience, ideology, and personality,” it seems Palin can’t stop herself from using the word in the way she uses so many other regional terms: as a way to rope off the Americans who matter from those who do not.

Palin’s constant use of geographic and class code words—“East coasters,” “media elites,” and “Washington insiders”—reflects just how steeped she is in Ginsu politics: The slicing and dicing of Americans into those who deserve her respect and those who warrant only contempt. As you have eloquently observed, “People are similar wherever you go.” But Gov. Palin just does not seem to share that worldview. I am trying to think of a single sentence she has uttered that has evinced compassion for the residents of downtown Seattle or for the entire East Coast she likes to write off with a wink and a sneer. Whatever you may say about Barack Obama, his 2004 convention speech was transformative in that it renounced the view that some Americans count more than others, based on artificial geographic or religious divisions. Rachael, try as I may, I cannot think of a single compassionate, elevating, or ennobling sentiment Palin has ever expressed toward Americans with which she disagrees—unless you count parroting Ronald Reagan. I can’t think of a single instance in which she has expressed or implied that Americans have more in common than not, and that were she to be elected, she would be respectful of and accountable to all of them, including East Coasters, environmentalists, and community organizers.

The Quasi-Cave

Heartland: A Place or a State of Mind?

Noreen,

You ask why it doesn't bother me that Sarah Palin claims a connection to the "heartland." I would chalk it up to a couple of reasons. For one, every time I see a picture from Wasilla, I'm reminded of the small town in North Dakota that my husband grew up in: the tiny city hall, the barely there downtown (except that Alaska's got all that gorgeous scenery). Though I've never been to Alaska, such images make it feel like an extension of the Great Plains, which are definitely part of the "heartland."

Secondly, I guess I take "heartland" less as a shorthand for folksiness and more as shorthand for non-big-city America. In an office conversation earlier today, our colleague Tim Noah pointed out that more Americans live in cities than in small towns, and this blog post in the Wall Street Journal looks at the numbers. The Census Bureau says that 80 percent of us live in metropolitan areas and only 20 percent elsewhere. But it's not that black and white. Some metropolitan areas dwarf others, and not every city is surrounded by the same bland, sprawling suburbs. The "suburb" I live in is actually a town that was founded in the early 1800s and has its own schools, a quaint downtown, and its own identity.

I grew up in a small town. I lived for eight years in the burbs of one our most vibrant and beautiful cities, Seattle. Now I live near Cincinnati, a place the Census Bureau would call a metropolitan area but one that feels minuscule compared with megalopolises like New York or Los Angeles and even considerably smaller than big cities like Seattle or Atlanta. One thing I've learned in my various experiences is that in many ways, people are similar wherever you go. People want a lot of the same things out of life and have many of the same concerns. And thanks to the mobility we enjoy, a lot of people in the big cities come from the heartland. But there are differences. And thank god. One of the things that I love passionately about this country is that it offers such a diversity of lifestyles. If you want to live somewhere where you can have a working-class job and still afford a sizable home for your family, where everyone knows everyone and half the town goes to the high school football games on Friday nights, there are thousands of places for that. If you want to live somewhere where you need to be an executive to afford an 800-square-foot waterfront condo that's within walking distance of Whole Foods and public transportation, well, did I mention Seattle? If you want to work 80 hours a week and be a millionaire, move to Wall Street. Want to be a surf bum or ski bum? The West is calling to you.

Noreen, my fellow Buckeye, you're from a part of Ohio that is definitely hurting more than some other parts of the heartland. I grew up in northeastern Ohio, and I remember the steel plants closing in the 1970s and my neighbors getting laid off. I remember when my grandfather moved his men's clothing store off of Main Street because the area was dying. I know how real that pain is, even if I'm more removed from it these days, and I can see why voters might think that Sarah Palin can't relate. At the same time, it's a problem that's been going on for decades, and I think people are going to be sorely disappointed if they're waiting for the federal government to fix it.

But, to circle back to your original question, when Sarah Palin says she's from the heartland, I get it on some level. Governing an oil-rich state with a budget surplus is indeed different than governing a state that is losing jobs and trying to figure out what to cut from the budget to save the schools and build roads. But most of us make our voting decisions based on a combination of a politican's skills, experience, ideology, and personality. Her experience might not scream "heartland," but her personality does.

Is Being Tolerant Acceptable?

I couldn't help but cringe last night when Sarah Palin said the word "tolerant" three times within seconds in the debate. I hate that word.

Tolerance is widely accepted as an admirable virtue, but it still feels cheap to me. Essentially what Palin is saying is that she puts up with homosexual couples. There's no approval there, no acceptance, just respectful disregard. The difference between "tolerance" and "acceptance" is like the difference between looking the other way and actively supporting something. Her tolerant speech doesn't mean she supports, or even approves of, homosexuality. It means she just doesn't act out against it.

To be fair, neither Biden nor Palin support gay marriage. That was the one point on which they both whole-heartedly agreed last night. But Biden's answer was more political, less personal, and absolutely less grinding than Palin's, who seems to think looking away is a virtue in itself.

But maybe it's all just nuance.

Heartburn

Marjorie, I couldn't agree more about Sarah Palin's convenient geographic confusion—why are people letting her get away with saying her Alaska roots give her a "connection to the heartland"? And Rachael, fellow Ohioan, why doesn't that bug you?

I get that the heartland is an easy shorthand for "folksiness." And the specifics she cited have a lot of resonance, sure: worries about a special needs child, a son in the military, the cost of college and of health care. But context is important. It's very different to be sitting around the kitchen table in Wasilla worrying about those things than it is in Ohio, where your local economy isn't hemorrhaging just jobs, but entire industries. The "heartland" she references so glibly formed its identity and its values from the industries—manufacturing, agriculture—that are rapidly changing or disappearing, and that's a large part of what makes the piecemeal worries about health care and tuition weigh far more heavily than the sum of their parts for people who live there. Palin made a big deal about American exceptionalism last night, but Alaskan exceptionalism is far more germane—as she pointed out last night, it's the "nation's only Arctic state." You can define the heartland as broadly as you want, but Alaska just isn't in it.

Alaska's economy, thanks to oil revenues, has been likened to that of Abu Dhabi. The state has a budget surplus. There are relatively few manufacturing jobs and few illegal aliens, so there's not the looming specter of losing jobs overseas or to cheaper labor here. The state has the lowest individual tax burden. She's co-opting—and cheapening—a narrative that she has had no real contact with. Living in Wasilla is nothing like living in the rapidly changing modern heartland. That bothers me on a visceral level, but what troubles me on a deeper one is that that means she has no experience in what it's like to govern in the non-Abu Dhabi parts of America and very little context that would help her learn to do so, fluency in "doggone" and "gosh darns" put aside.

There's plenty about Alaska that makes it symbolically appealing as uniquely American, and the same goes for Palin, I'm sure. But from where I'm sitting, this seems like the most plausible heartland connection she's got.

Asked and Answered

Joe Biden, Regular Guy

I know this debate was mostly about Sarah Palin, but let's not be sexist and forget about Joe Biden. I thought he was great, not least because he came across as what Palin pretends to be but isn't—and what this campaign could really use: a regular person who resists pat categorizing, rather than a caricature in a polarized drama that bears no relation to life.

I'm not saying that's Biden's usual public mode by any means: Man-off-his-meds can be more his style. But last night on the stage next to Palin, he was a guy in a dark suit who calmly confounded a script that's getting awfully tiresome. He wasn't the Elite Insider to her Maverick Outsider; the way Biden drew on his career accomplishments, he made 36 years in the Senate sound like real-world experience with real challenges for an independent minded person—not (as McCain often does) arcane ritual, and not like the vague grandstanding Palin invokes when she refers to her executive experience. He didn't come across as Professorial Wonk to her Main Street Mom, either, and not just because he said "champ" and invoked his blue-collar origins; he marshaled facts with ease, gave them punch because he knew what he was talking about, where for all her folksiness, her own patter sounded totally canned.

And he wasn't the Old Guy to her Young Gal; only six years younger than McCain, Biden may say "ladies and gentlemen," but he seems a generation apart, lacking the condescendingly old-school tone I hear in everything McCain says about his running mate. Maybe it's that Biden has a hands-on dad aura, which he comes by totally honestly. (Shouldn't we be parsing that choke-up? Seemed completely real to me.)

Race, gender, age, class, education, values, experience: This is a campaign in which both sides like to talk about surmounting divisions and bringing both sides together. But doggone it, you don't very often get to see someone just walking the walk.

D'oh! That's Who Sarah Palin Reminds Me Of

I have been racking my brain to figure out who Sarah Palin reminds me of ever since she came on the scene with her bright smile, her folksy-corporate style, and her Silly Puttied authenticity, which mirrors back at the viewer whatever talking point she's just absorbed. From the start, I've found her stylistically arresting, for reasons that have to do with her energy and her youth but also, I felt, with some dim recollection of a dark literary doppelganger ... And just now, watching the very end of the debate, it struck me: Sarah Palin reminds me of a character in a George Saunders story. Saunders writes brilliant short stories about characters trapped in the American Dream^TM. They are workers at theme parks or Hooters-style restaurants, mummified in corporate-sponsored "flair" (to borrow from the brilliant film Office Space). They speak in the same style of substanceless perk. They are to humanity what MSG is to flavor. (At least, some are.) Palin is, of course, far more successful than many of Saunders' characters, and I don't make the comparison merely to caricature her but to capture what I think is crucial about her. She buys into a whole vocabulary of signifiers that often don't signify very much, and she scaffolds that lexicon with winks, smiles, and carefully mimed gestural reinforcement. All politicians employ empty rhetoric, of course. But I don't know that I've ever seen one employ superficial language with such a sense of palpable enjoyment at her (or his, of course) mastery. And just like Saunders' characters, she refuses to show vulnerability or hesitation, deploying rapid-fire prepackaged phrases like a missile shield, as if the silence that comes with groping for ideas were deadly. (Just listen to her answer about her "Achilles' heel" in the V.P. debate, and compare it with dialogue in a Saunders story.) She loves to say "maverick" and "zero-base" and to recount how she once "quasi-caved" on an issue but didn't "compromise." (Huh?)

A lot of the original media coverage of Palin was confused by things about her that derive, it seems to me, from the fact that she's a woman in the West (which Camille Paglia wrote astutely about a few weeks ago). But what's *not* Western about Palin is how avidly she's borrowed and inhabited the language of cute-can-do-ism that's exploited by companies to lull workers into taking pleasure in how much of their time is given over to "breakout sessions" and the business of being an employee. Throughout the debate, she talked like the executive she's so proud to be rather than the governor she ought to be. (It's no surprise, it occurs to me belatedly, that Saunders wrote a brilliant parody of Palin's speech patterns right after the RNC speech, which you can find here.)

Meanwhile, Biden was the tortoise to her hyper hare: He chipped away slowly and steadily and relaxed as the night progressed. And his answer about being a father and understanding what it's like to raise a child who might not make it was authoritative and emotional at the same time.

Returning to the Eros Question, Biden vs. Palin Edition

I was teaching a class tonight (on T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," of all texts) and so I just got home to watch the debate and read everyone's responses. A number of my XX Factor colleagues here said that the debate tonight wasn't "about" gender. I guess that's true, but on the other hand, it was, at least in one small way. On CNN, the tracked "real time" reactions of uncommitted Ohio voters were divided by sex. And boy, did Biden simply not seem to connect with male voters. Those same men seemed to like Palin, though—a lot more than the women did. The Ohio women thumbed their disapproval when Palin got cutesy ("It's 'Drill, baby, drill' "), sending her ratings down. Women *really* didn't like it when Palin talked about Iraq and the "white flag of surrender." And they loved it when Biden talked about Pakistan. Meanwhile, any time Palin turned and faced the camera, the men's ratings shot up attentively. This division may have a lot to do with issue keywords—that is, a difference in which issues mean what to the two sexes in Ohio. But it was striking nonetheless. Gender may not be an issue, but I still contend that Eros is one, and Palin just has much more charge on stage than Biden does. (I have to say, I don't think that his suit or tie helped; he seemed overdressed, overformal.)

Meanwhile, I was disappointed (if not surprised) to find that one of their few moments of total agreement concerned the issue of gay marriage. When Biden firmly said "no," neither he nor Obama supported gay marriage, I thought: *here* is politics as usual. Two candidates who've suffered discrimination in different ways (Obama, Palin) yet both defend a profound form of continued discrimination. Nice. 

All Style, No Substance

Posted on behalf of XX Factor contributor Marjorie Valbrun, who's experiencing technical difficulties:

Sarah Palin pandering to Jewish voters while simultaneously being hyperbolic about the threat that Iran poses to Israel: We can't allow "a second Holocaust" against "this peace-seeking nation" where we'd one day like to place our "embassy in Jerusalem."

Sarah Palin trying to compensate for being less than worldly, unknowledgeable about foreign and domestic policy issues, and inarticulate during one-on-one interviews: "It's so obvious I'm not a Washington insider." "I may not answer the questions the way you want me to."

Sarah Palin being annoyingly and disingenuously "folksy" and "real" while trying to take the focus off McCain's record in Congress: "Now Joe there ya go again looking at the past, now. Doggone it, let's look ahead." "Can wait to get there and get with ya." "I want to send a shout out to all those third-graders at Gladys Elementary School."

Sarah Palin being geographically challenged: Referring to Alaska to describe her "connection to the heartland of America." (Since when did Alaska become the heartland of the United States?)

Sarah Palin communicating in a language other than English: "We have got not to allow ..."

I don't believe she is purposely displaying a streak of anti-intellectualism to appeal to the Republican base, as some have suggested, I think she just is really not that smart or quick on her feet. When she couldn't answer a question, she went back to her talking points and repeated the same lines over and over like a malfunctioning robot. Her small town girl witticisms aside, I heard nothing from her to reassure me that she has one iota of the emotional intelligence needed to be vice president (and possibly president) or the necessary intellectual heft.

Not Exhibit A

Posting on behalf of Emily Yoffe, who's traveling:

Biden won, but more important, Sarah Palin rehabilitated herself from being a national joke. If she’d been performing as she did tonight during her big media interviews, she would have saved all of us a lot of existential squirming. And whatever your politics, I'd rather not have one of the candidates for the second-highest office in the country appear to be a fool. This makes her less of an issue, less of Exhibit A of John McCain's bad judgment. So, doesn’t tonight's debate makes the conventional wisdom right—that the vice-presidential pick really doesn't matter that much?

She Did What She Had To Do

The debate is over, and the Republican base is breathing a huge sigh of relief. Sarah Palin didn't make a royal mess of the debate, something that a lot of us feared might happen after her disastrous sitdown with Katie Couric.

Yes, she benefited from the fact she didn't have to take follow-ups, and she benefited from low expectations. But she was tough and charming, and she held her own against an opponent with vastly more experience and who was on his game in his own right. She almost made me want to believe in a windfall profits tax.

This is precisely what I was hoping for. I like her personally—she's endearing, even with that accent—and we share some important beliefs. (Not all. I will cheer the day any presidential or VP candidate, Republican or Democrat, stands onstage in an important debate and calls out for marriage equality.) However inexperienced she might be, I don't want her to get the blame for taking the whole ticket down with her.

Before McCain stunned all of us with the Palin pick, the consensus is that it's rare for a vice-presidential candidate to make a big difference in the outcome of the election. But then Palin took McCain on a meteoric rise and seemed poised to take him to equally low depths. I think, or at least hope, that she halted that tonight.

I don't know if McCain is going to get a boost from it. She might not pick up any independents. If you look at the instant—and unscientific—Internet polls that appear on Drudge and some of the news sites, they are laughably partisan. Drudge an InstaPundit readers love Palin. MSNBC.com, home to Keith Olbermann, has Biden winning by ridiculous margins.

There's no doubt that McCain is in trouble. He's trailing in the polls, and some of that has got to be because Obama is viewed by voters as better on the economy and the way the House Republicans made him look bad on the bailout. It's going to take more than an amazing vice-presidential nominee to pull him out of that. She saved his campaign five weeks ago. It would be nice if she could do more interviews and perform well in them. But at the end of the day, it's still John McCain running for president. Let's at least say that if Obama beats McCain next month, it's because Barack's the better candidate, not because a hockey mom from Alaska brought down the GOP.

She Shimmied. He Choked Up. But Did They Swing?

Does it make any sense to say that as expected, Sarah Palin exceeded expectations? She didn't flail. She didn't lose her train of thought or all semblance of recognizable syntax. She powered through her answers, airy and bloated as some of them were. She snapped out of the stumped distress of her Couric interviews and turned back into the perky forceful governor who showed up at the Republican convention. What made the spell-breaking difference? She had more facts at her fingertips. She got to needle an opponent, which she clearly loves and does well. But the real magic, I think, is that she didn't have to answer a single follow-up question. God bless that format.

So Palin redeemed herself. But how much does it matter? Because Joe Biden was good. She knifed him in the ribs with a smile, with a wink here, a "darn right" there. And he came back with strength, emotion, and point-by-point substance. According to those mesmerizing green and orange lines on CNN that tracked reactions among undecided Ohio voters—men and women separated this time, instead of Republicans, Democrats, and independents—Biden's numbers spiked every time he talked about the economy and the Iraq war. Palin's didn't. It doesn't matter how many times she says "doggone it" if that reflects the wider sentiment of voters in the middle. Palin got her base back, if she'd ever lost it. But with JohnMcCain writing off Michigan today, that's not enough. How many people who didn't already agree with Palin did her restored charm win over?

What did you all think of Biden's tearing up, briefly, at the end? It worked for me: He was talking about the terrible car accident that killed his first wife and their baby daughter. He choked up in the midst of a powerful answer about how he understands what it's like to be a single parent and to worry deeply about one's family.

My favorite Palin moment: "The chant is 'Drill baby drill,' "she corrected Biden, who'd said, "drill drill drill," and for emphasis she gave a little shimmy. That's the effective blend of femininity and toughness that has made a lot of us waste a lot of time this fall watching her every move. Welcome back, Sarah Barracuda.

My favorite Biden moment: his deconstruction of Palin's much-repeated mantra that she and McCain are the mavericks in this race. Biden ripped her on the facts, citing all the votes McCain has cast with Bush.Then he ended with "maverick he is not." It had gravitas, it was on message, and as my colleague John Swansburg said, it felt cathartic.

PowerPoint Sarah

I think it’s fair to say that gender was just not an issue tonight. Biden didn’t get all weird about it. Palin didn’t, either. Also fair to say that both sides exceeded expectations. By a lot. Biden was as good as I have ever seen him. Palin was almost as good as she was at the convention. Here’s the difference: Biden was like Obama last week: a flatline. OK, maybe a flatline with tears, but, still, he didn’t modulate or escalate or hyperventilate. He just made his points—“a maverick he is not”—and stayed right on task. At his very best moments—talking about Cheney for instance—he was devastating. Whereas Palin was like McCain last week, reinventing herself on the fly. She toggled back and forth between Farmers Almanac Sarah (with the “gol-durnds,” and the “bless-yer-hearts,” and that wacky “diverse family”) and PowerPoint Sarah, who spoke in canned talking points, regardless of the question posed. As was the case with McCain last week, her rhetorical mood swings became ever more jarring as Biden stayed on message. Palin will get props tonight for holding her own. But I have to say I am less certain than ever of which Sarah Palin she was trying to hold onto.