thegradstudent

I’m going to depart from my usual grad school theme and offer my impressions of the VP debate. I watched most of the presidential debate last week as well but I felt unmotivated to comment on it here, partly because it was largely unsurprising and partly because I was so paralyzingly depressed about the government (yes, even more than usual). The only surprise of that debate for me was McCain’s debating skill. It didn’t make me want to vote for him since I still disagreed with most of his arguments, but he certainly got Obama on his heels several times and I’m not surprised that people other than Fox thought that he won the debate. But they still both sounded like broken records. I was more interested in the vice presidential debate as we hadn’t heard as much from those candidates other than embarrassing sound bites. I should have known, however, that this debate would be as painfully predictable as the rest. If I had played a talking points or key word drinking game I would now be dead of alcohol poisoning. The use of “maverick” alone would have cleaned out my alcohol supply.

The debate began with Sarah asking Joe if she could use his first name, presumably a knock at Obama’s much publicized use of John’s first name rather than his title in the previous debate. Then Biden began reading from a script and flashing his game show host grin while Sarah danced around the questions with colloquialisms, appeals to soccer and hockey moms, and even the occasional roguish wink. Biden soon became more natural and ultimately I found him to be poised and respectable but still approachable. I’m sure some may have been turned off by his more formal speech and rhetoric and his tendency to repeat numbered points, but his style was infinitely more bearable than Sarah’s down home exclamations like “darn right,” “you betcha,” and “doggoneit.” I think my ears are still bleeding. I’ve never thought that Sarah’s “Joe 6-Pack” would make a very good president and he makes an even worse speech writer.

I realize I’m barely discussing the issues, but hey, I’m following the candidates’ example. I was glad to see the moderator note when debaters failed to answer the question at hand, though that didn’t seem to faze Sarah Palin. I never thought I’d hear a debator admit that “I may not answer the questions the way the moderator wants” but I suppose that’s a better dodge than “I’ll get back to ya.” Sigh. When the vp candidates did answer the questions there was much rehashing of old arguments (the next person who mentions meetings with or without preconditions gets punched in the face) but also some new information for me. I didn’t know, for example, how they felt about homosexual unions…and now I know how Biden feels about the issue and how Palin avoids and complicates simple questions. It was also interesting to get further information about their own and their principles’ service and voting records, though of course we’ll have to wait for the fact checkers to sort through their inaccuracies.

The final analysis: Both candidates did a competent job avoiding embarrassment… but I think we all still fear deeply for the future.

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