Clueless in St. Louis

For Senator John McCain and soulmate AK Gov. Sarah Palin, success means merely not being a total, unmitigated disaster.

And not being a total, umitigated disaster involves 90 minutes filled with vacuous talking points, tortured syntax, and "folksy" superficialities presided over by the least conscientious or effective debate moderator in recent memory, Gwen Ifill.

No follow-up questions, no effort to keep either participant to addressing the initial inquiries, and very little, if any, "debate." E.g., if you have to explain Achilles' heel, then by all means, do it.

Last night's encounter between Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden was, for the most part, a mighty tedious affair.

Even so, it had its entertaining moments, and we learned that Sarah Palin evidently favors a "living Constitution," complete with evolving standards pursuant to the role of the vice president:

We know what a vice president does. And that's not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

Reading that again, who knows what the hell she is talking about. Apparently Gwen Ifill was puzzled by this as well and asked:

Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

Palin replied that the founding fathers [sic] allowed "through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president" and that "Yeah, I do agree with [Cheney] that we have a lot of flexibility in there."

Needless to say, Sarah Palin is no Dick Cheney. But that she claims to see the vice presidency through the same lens as does Dick Cheney should comfort no one. Especially Dick Cheney, who surely must be privately appalled at the addled performances of his prospective successor.

But, as with the balance of Palin's rehearsed and notated verbiage, no details, no specifics, and, most importantly, no substance.

We also learned that when it comes to the current state of the economy, it's Wall Street bankers who are the victims:

It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street. And now we have to be ever vigilant and also making sure that credit markets don't seize up. That's where the Main Streeters like me, that's where we would really feel the effects.

We were also treated to Palin's unique scientific method with respect to climatology. Asked "what is true and what is false" about the causes of the Earth's changing climate, Palin said, while acknowledging "there are real changes going on in our climate":

I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts.

Which naturally begs the question, if you don't determine the causes, how are you going to "get there to affect the impacts"? An amazingly dumb response.

Then there was EYE-RACK. What is Palin's plan for an exit strategy?

"I am very thankful that we do have a good plan." That was about it. Faced with Biden's observations that the U.S. has trained 400,000 Iraqi troops and that country has billions of dollars in the bank and it's about time they stepped up to the plate, Palin called that "a white flag of surrender." Nice sound bite, but not much of a riposte.

According to Palin, the Iraqi administration still can't govern its own people and its security forces still can't secure them, yet "the surge worked ... the surge works" despite Iraqi self-governance and security being the surge's objectives.

And "our commanders on the ground," predicted Palin, will decide when the Iraqi government is effectively governing. That's the military's latest mission, apparently, as political scientists.

That Sarah Palin is incoherent is bad enough. That she's not even aware of her incoherence is disturbing, to say the least.

Best of all, Palin promised "huge blunders" from a Palin-McCain administration. Good to know, and good to remember on Nov. 4.

As for Joe Biden, there was much post-debate criticism on the part of the paid punditry for his "speaking the language of Washington" and so forth. Well, what do those critics expect? Somebody has to state the record, which necessarily involves facts and figures, when somebody else is standing there blathering party platitudes that only infer and allude to misstated and misrepresented facts.

Thankfully, however, this debate is over and Sarah Palin can return to her role as bumbling sideshow and comic relief. Oh, and there is at least one holdover from the current Bush administration from which the Palin-McCain ticket will not allow us any escape: "nucular."

But Palin's debate performance, as generally non-disastrous as it was, will do nothing to improve John McCain's declining fortunes.