The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
I know of no other way to explain the general response from the punditry to last night's debate. As someone who follows politics closely (and as a litigator), I can honestly say that I have never seen a worse performance in a presidential or vice presidential debate than Sarah Palin's last night. I doubt there has been a worse performance in the television era.
If you doubt this, take a look at the official transcript. Most of Palin's answers, even when they were responsive (which was rare), were devoid of substance and mangled on delivery. She was transposing words frequently (on at least one occasion she reversed Wall Street and Main Street) and using prepositions and transition phrases in ways that made no sense. Her responses to several direct questions, most notably the one on climate change and the one about the use of nuclear weapons, were completely incoherent.
If we hadn't just lived through a week in which news channels played some of Palin's most embarrassing interview moments over and over again, I really think the story tonight would have been how badly she did in the debate. But because expectation levels were so low, she necessarily exceeded them. She did better than an average hockey mom plucked off the street would have, and therefore, we're supposed to believe that she "held her own."
But think about this. If a member of Congress had been selected at random and put on stage with no prep time at all, would that person have done better than Sarah Palin did last night? The answer is almost surely yes. Palin's understanding of the issues was clearly confined to a handful of (poorly) memorized talking points. She often had to change the subject because she couldn't answer a question. She almost never responded directly to the points Biden was making, and showed no ability whatsoever to engage in actual spontaneous thought or argument.
Even her emotional instincts were suspect. She blindly opened the door to Biden's response about his own personal tragedy, and when he choked up, she responded in a weirdly disconnected way by smiling and saying something about how mavericky John McCain is. It was an odd moment, to say the least.
What's saddest I think is that Palin is getting much better reviews than she would have if she were a man. Let's face it. The press is holding her to a much lower standard for fear of being called sexist by Republicans. Dan Quayle did much better than Palin did in his 1988 debate and he didn't get nearly the praise she has. I think Joe Biden did an excellent job last night, but at times I almost wished that Hillary had been up on that stage, if for no other reason than to remind people what an intelligent, knowledgeable, competent woman looks like in a debate. If Hillary had demolished Palin in the way Biden did (and she would have), the press would have been much less reluctant to call a spade a spade.
In that sense, I really think Palin is setting the women's movement back. There's no reason that her threshold for competence should be so much lower than everyone else's.
If you doubt this, take a look at the official transcript. Most of Palin's answers, even when they were responsive (which was rare), were devoid of substance and mangled on delivery. She was transposing words frequently (on at least one occasion she reversed Wall Street and Main Street) and using prepositions and transition phrases in ways that made no sense. Her responses to several direct questions, most notably the one on climate change and the one about the use of nuclear weapons, were completely incoherent.
If we hadn't just lived through a week in which news channels played some of Palin's most embarrassing interview moments over and over again, I really think the story tonight would have been how badly she did in the debate. But because expectation levels were so low, she necessarily exceeded them. She did better than an average hockey mom plucked off the street would have, and therefore, we're supposed to believe that she "held her own."
But think about this. If a member of Congress had been selected at random and put on stage with no prep time at all, would that person have done better than Sarah Palin did last night? The answer is almost surely yes. Palin's understanding of the issues was clearly confined to a handful of (poorly) memorized talking points. She often had to change the subject because she couldn't answer a question. She almost never responded directly to the points Biden was making, and showed no ability whatsoever to engage in actual spontaneous thought or argument.
Even her emotional instincts were suspect. She blindly opened the door to Biden's response about his own personal tragedy, and when he choked up, she responded in a weirdly disconnected way by smiling and saying something about how mavericky John McCain is. It was an odd moment, to say the least.
What's saddest I think is that Palin is getting much better reviews than she would have if she were a man. Let's face it. The press is holding her to a much lower standard for fear of being called sexist by Republicans. Dan Quayle did much better than Palin did in his 1988 debate and he didn't get nearly the praise she has. I think Joe Biden did an excellent job last night, but at times I almost wished that Hillary had been up on that stage, if for no other reason than to remind people what an intelligent, knowledgeable, competent woman looks like in a debate. If Hillary had demolished Palin in the way Biden did (and she would have), the press would have been much less reluctant to call a spade a spade.
In that sense, I really think Palin is setting the women's movement back. There's no reason that her threshold for competence should be so much lower than everyone else's.
posted by A.L. at 9:12 AM
5 Comments:
Spot on, A.L.
--Darjeeling
Bingo. Some of those answers were so bizarrely phrased that I find myself wondering how I someone could spontaneously deliver them. What's the quote about wandering out of a sentence?
I read a comment from a woman on another blog. Her take was that Palin is the typical vacuous pretty faced Barbie that gets promoted these days by male bosses of an older generation to prove they are hip with feminism.
Such bosses demand that all rally round to support Barbie in her new role, and anyone who dares criticize is deemed an enemy. Barbie herself is totally incompetent, but is fawned on by her male peers to impress the boss, and supported by her subordinates out of fear of taking the blame for her mistakes.
Sound familiar?
She seemed semi-competent for the first fifteen minutes or so, but it quickly became clear that she was reciting talking points whether they related to the question or not. She even bragged about not giving Biden and Ifill the answers they wanted. When she had to improvise, she was incoherent. Biden wiped the floor with her, as was evident to anyone with half a brain.
She is definitely setting the women's movement back. Is it any wonder her support among women is shrinking. We've all seen someone like her, who succeeds in life, despite an obvious lack of skills, by being pretty, perky, and deferential to men.
I say bravo to the puppets pulling her strings. They helped her get through it without completely revealing how incompetent she really is. She clearly is not capable of doing anything other than recite catch phrases in the hope that it appeals to 'common folk', the problem being it reveals to everyone else just how moronic she really is.. Just imagine what her responses would have been like had she been left to fend for herself! Now that would have been entertainment!
My favourite line from the transcipt is Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider. Man, oh man does that sum her up to a tea!
Oh- and if I hear her call McCain a maverick one more time, I think I am going to scream!
Also, I agree that she is a poor representation of a woman in a position of power. How sad for the early women's liberation activists that this is where the United States has headed.I guess one good thing is that now the kids have a real live Barbie to aspire to! When will Mattel be bringing out the "Palin" Barbie....
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