The Morning After

Waking up this morning, I am a less impressed with Sarah Palin's debate performance than I was last night. Given some space and some distance from the tinkling pixels of my TV screen, it seems clear Biden won on points. The problem for people who don't like Palin is that during the debate itself it felt a lot more like Palin's night.

Part of this was expectations. WaPo guy Howard Kurtz wondered if Palin would "fall on her face." Atlantic guy Ross Douthat said it would take the greatest resurrection since Lazarus for Palin to survive the debate (or I think he did, but I can't find the link). Anyway the story line seemed to be that Palin was on the verge of loosing not just the debate, but control of her public image to such an extent that her political future in any election was on the line. The specter of Dan Quayle was raised. Given that context, the mere act of being able to transcend the crash and burn trajectory felt heroic.

It would be unfair, though, to pretend that the juice in Palin's performance during the debate was only an illusion of low expectations. Her freshness, her enthusiasm, and her authenticity are genuinely appealing. Noam Scheiber, no fan of Palin's, acknowledges it in a gobsmacked way at TNR ("how can we compete with that") before insisting that all is OK because it wears thin. The standard critique here is that this is not really a plus because elections should be decided on substance not style. This is a dodge; of course elections are decided on both and ought to be. To be an elected politician is to fill a symbolic role in the publics eyes, to be a representative. But beyond that it is a pretense that Biden has no style and Palin no substance. Biden's most effective moment was when he spoke to knowing what it is like to raise children as a single parent and reflected on tough moments around the proverbial kitchen table, the kind of homey direct-to-the-viewer pitch that is supposed to be Palin's strong suit. And any sober look at Palin's record shows not only competence but the sort of staid effectiveness that is often a selling point for old hands in the Senate.

Any politician has both style and substance, but the difference between any politician and a mere think tank guy or policy wonk is the ability to connect to a public and fill that representative role. If you are in the opposition you call this style and downplay it - witness Republicans on Barack Obama - but it is a massive part of what it means to be a politician, it was the juice in Palin's performance last night, and it will probably secure her political future.