And the winner is ...

I saw this coming. The left has created their narrative with relentless smears and a media willing to aid them. Her first interview with Charlie Gibson was a display of bad faith questions and deceptive editing which anyone who has read the full transcript of her interview can attest. The Couric interview was a train wreck, no doubt in part due to inexperience and excessive caution on her part in light of the first go-round. It certainly bolstered the left's narrative about her and had a lot of conservatives nervous about how knowledgeable she'd come across in the debate.

Here's what I posted in a thread on Commentary's blog before the debate:

Enough with this talk about comparative knowledge bases. When Palin has made me cringe it hasn’t been due to her not knowing the intricacies of policy and has had everything to do with the fact that she has been on perpetual defense. Yes, she’s had to introduce herself in the face of innumerable smears. Yes, she is facing a hostile media which will do everything in their power to make her look like an idiot by editing or the manner of questioning. And yes, it is a rather onerous task to master the language of BS that is inherent in speaking on behalf of a running mate rather than simply expressing your own beliefs. This is especially true when her career thus far has been in an executive capacity where she’s had the comfort of speaking for herself, and she doesn’t have Biden’s “luxury” of talking out of his posterior and contradicting his own campaign with impunity. That’s a lot of land mines for her.

But the bottom line as far as I’m concerned is that what makes her compelling is that she represents an extraordinary example of the millions of regular people who are sick of Washington and yet she is coming across as someone who is letting them squash her. She hasn’t lost her personal narrative because she has failed to provide wonkish prattle but because her whole raison d’etre is being nullified by her being on the defensive. She’d be a polarizing figure no matter what, but the opinions that matter are not those of the bone smugglers in the chattering class. Hopefully they’ve figured this out and we’ll see her let loose tonight.


She was set loose and she came through in spades. She more than held her own and while Biden had the command of "facts" you'd expect from a 35-year Senate veteran, a lot of his rhetorical points were bullshit. His account of Lebanon was nonsensical. His characterization of his vote for war authorization with regard to Iraq was a lie. His adamant suggestion that Obama never called for face to face meetings with Ahmadinejad was laughable. His suggestion that McCain voted down funding the troops in Iraq was grossly misleading. His continuation of the Democrats mantra that the financial crisis is the result of deregulation defies reality. And so on. Palin had a few flubs, misnaming the General in charge of Afghanistan and characterizing the troop numbers currently in Iraq as being at pre-surge levels. But the fact that they were peripheral matters as opposed to the crux of her 90 minute argument makes a world of difference. If only the media was being honest and objective in their fact-checking. Thus far it appears they're letting a lot of Biden's demonstrable falsehoods slide, and the cyber moonbats are actually trying to spin the fact that Palin didn't call him on every last one of his lies as proof of her lack of knowledge. Interesting argument.

Ideally people like Palin, Biden and Obama never get this close to the White House but I can hardly fault a woman with a bright future who was tapped prematurely when she's on a ticket running against an aging buffoon and a narcissistic lightweight leftist with good packaging who has been rehearsing his talking points longer than she has.