You can make up for a lot of failings by being beautiful or nice, or both. You can sometimes get your way through intimidation and fear. But these are fine lines. People don’t like it when people play on their good looks, or are so nice that they aren’t tough enough. And you can only bully people for as long as they remain disorganized and unable to overwhelm you. Sarah Palin plans to attack Joe Biden tonight. Can she do that and be nice at the same time? It’s a big risk. People might forgive Palin’s lack of experience and worldly knowledge if they felt she was a genuinely good person with good instincts and the right priorities. If they like her, they might give her chance. Scooter Libby almost got an acquittal because the jury liked him and thought he got a raw deal.
My feeling is that Palin will pay the same price that McCain did if she chooses to be sarcastic and ungracious. If I were advising her, I’d tell her to be self-deprecating and honest about her shortcomings. She should explain her personal philosophy that would inform her decision making. Attacking Joe Biden seems like a profoundly bad idea. If she trades away her likeability, what does she have left?
Attacking Joe Biden seems like a profoundly bad idea. If she trades away her likeability, what does she have left?
She has 2 things.
Do you still actually think the debate even matters to the people who are STILL undecided at this point? Because the people who are still undecided by now are the people who will go with the spin they are fed, not the substantive debate itself. GOP has better spin doctors.
Let’s face it BooMan, anyone still undecided right now is borderline delusional, and that’s 75% of being a Republican in 2008 as it is.
She attacked with a smile in her gubernatorial debate performances. As long as she sprinkles in vague nonsense about the greatness of Small Town America and “Values” she gets away with it. Easy.
My prediction: Tonight will be a stylistic tie, which will be a victory for McCain/Palin.
Palin has already joked that as a hockey mom she is a pit bull with lipstick. By planning to attack Biden’s record, she is not only stepping up to the VP role of attack dog, she is trying to shift the debate focus from her experience to Biden’s.
By doing this, she does risk appearing less likable to the independents and moderate Republicans that McCain is trying to woo. But she will only make the Religious Right love her the more. In addition, low information women voters who liked Hillary, might admire Palin’s “fighting spirit” — especially if they aren’t paying too much attention to the specifics of what Palin is fighting for. Further, if Biden appears to fight back in any way that can be construed as sexist, she can score some extra points.
For some reason, McCain has been trying to appropiate the image of Harry Truman in recent days, even campaigning in Independence. The McCain campaign might try to spin the “throw everything against the wall to see if anything sticks” strategy as a demonstration of feistiness and independence.
Attack is a bad strategy. It will be hugely successful with her base but it will do nothing with independents and that is who she needs to impress.
Now, if she can attack with humor and not come off as nasty she might pull off not alienating anyone. But I don’t think it will win over independents.
I disagree. She did quite well with independents after her nasty, attack-filled RNC speech. She only fell when her qualifications came into question.
If she attacks tonight, everyone will say “she held her own” and concerns over her readiness will recede.
We’ll check the polls after and see. But the first time she was new, she was speaking to an audience who cheered her. It doesn’t come off as nasty when you smile and an audience cheers you. But saying it to dead silence in a debate … whole different feel.
If the media afterwards goes with “she held her own” that will be the cue that a lot of independents need to decide whether it went too far or not. And I think they’re more disposed to praise David challenging Goliath rather than to trash David.
We’ll see. I hope you’re right.
I think she reminds many women of that nasty high school cheerleader that you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of…popular, but almost universally disliked at the same time.
I can’t see how she could win anyone over with her mix of empty verbal salad, nasty sniping, and tendency towards knee-jerk defensiveness when asked even a simple question like “what do you read?”.
Of course, I’m not a backwoods jesus-loving moose killer, so what do I know? After all, enough people voted for Bush to let him steal 2 elections.
Yeah.
But amazingly people put up with it. They want attention from the kewl kids no matter how abusive the kewl kids are. Remember Cordelia season 1 of Buffy (pre-Zander). She was mean but Willow didn’t see anything wrong with that – until Buffy pointed it out. Social hierarchies are hard to break. Even as adults.
Steve Chapman, a Libertarian leaning Chicago Tribune columnist, pisses me off half the time and teaches me something the rest of the time. Today he offered one of the kind of true insights that only seems obvious in retrospect:
I’d love for Biden (or anybody) to finally call her on it, but Americans cling most tightly to the beliefs they know for sure are total bullshit, so he wouldn’t dare. A person can dream, though.
i dont think americans like a vagina full of sharp teeth
that was part of hillary’s problem
but they also are not going to want to see biden smack palin in the face with his superior penis
i think they may both do an eggshell walk tonite
thanks for that image…a penis and a vagina with teeth walking on eggshells.
Maybe somebody posted this yesterday.
A slideshow of Biden’s debate prep.
Not to be shallow or anything, but I find those matching cheek-moles on Granholm’s face to be mesmerizing. I’m not sure I’d be able to concentrate on what she’s saying.
Not to be shallow but I agree.
And continuing not to be shallow, I’m betting Palin wears a skirt tonight and not a pantsuit. Breaking female debate tradition.
I hope she wears the beehive. I saw her with her hair down and today and it makes her look more human.
Yeah, especially the usual messy beehive; no hairdresser beehive. The messiness drives a whole lot of women I know crazy.
That whole repressed librarian thing she does grates on me.
Is it November 5th yet? š
Do you think she really needs those glasses or are they just a prop? If only she could blink she could wear contacts. But … it’s IMPORTANT not to blink.
We need to trash about Joe for a while. Solid tie or striped?
Solid tie…and no cufflinks. In fact, he should wear a dress shirt from KMart to prove he’s one of us.
Yeah, solid tie. And he needs to ditch those cheese-eating surrender monkey cuffs. Kmart or WalMart – really thin material. No undershirt. Or maybe a wife beater?
he needs to drink a pot of coffee beforehand so he can stain those pearly white teeth.
Using baby Trig as a prop IS disgusting. Hatman Drudge’s current dredge banner photo features Palin arriving with baby exposed to the elements. Tonight: It’s Her turn.
I think she looks great with the beehive and loses her appeal when her hair is down.
Maybe it’s a guy thing. I can’t take anyone with a beehive seriously.
you know, it’s the whole prospect that she’ll let it down.
but, when she does, it’s a disappointment.
I think Biden should go for solid metallic blue.
My husband has a crush on those moles.
Well, your husband is obviously not shallow.
The more I think about it…
…if this were a boxing match, then Palin would be Sugar Ray Leonerd or Muhammed Ali, and Joe Biden would be Thomas Hearns or Ken Norton.
Palin is the one that tries to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Biden is the one that tries to hunt you down, wear you down, and break your will.
Palin’s strategy, then, must be to survive by floating around the questions without getting knocked out, and score points with counterattacks. She will aim for zingers, not substance. But her zingers shouldn’t be desperate haymakers. They must be timely retorts. Biden swings and misses and gets tagged with a counterpunch. Meanwhile, she just hopes tires himself (and the audience) out so she can win the later rounds.
For Biden, the key is not to tire himself out in the early rounds by throwing too many punches. He must pace himself and keep his guard up when he throws a punch.
So much for the boxing analogy. The idea that Palin has the skills of Sugar Ray and Ali is making me dizzy.
When you talk about boxing, it reminds me of this:
Likability? I have not found her even remotely likable for even one moment from the first word I heard from her mouth until now.
She makes my ass chew gum.
I had a aunt that said this from time to time..
Good points, but for a lot of people out there it’s a lot more acceptable for a female to attack a male than vice versa. For that matter, Biden himself appears to see it that way. At a Congress hearing in 1990 he praised his parents for denying him the right of self-defense when being beaten up by his older sister, Valerie:
Biden’s greatest political achievement, in his own opinion, is driving through the Violence Against Women Act (WAVA). Note the gendered language even in the name: He categorically rejected calls to name it the Anti-Domestic Violence Act, or some such, even though numerous studies have shown that domestic violence by women against men in heterosexual relationships is a serious problem. For example, one major study found that 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women, and when the violence is reciprocal, men are more likely to be injured (even though most of the severest violence is man-on-woman).
What’s really problematic about this law, and the companion laws and hundreds of state-level laws it has spawned, is how they bypass due process through the use and abuse of ex parte restraining orders. In many states a woman needs not even claim that physical violence has occurred or is imminent, but merely that she “feels threatened.” Such court orders are routinely granted by judges, whereupon men are made effectively homeless on a moment’s notice.
This and this are examples of the tragic injustice that occurs when this one-sided power is abused — which, people being what they are, it inevitably will be, especially with child custody disputes afoot. Nonetheless, Biden is looking to extend this anti-civil rights system on a global basis through the socalled “International WAVA.”
Anyway, it remains to be seen if mr. Chivalry can give as good as he gets tonight, and whether he can watch his big mouth. One compliment too many to Palin’s looks, and he could be toast. When spared the follow-up questions, Palin is supposed to be a bullshit artist; and much like his big sister, she won’t be holding back.