Palin Defeats Truman

Ben's post below was accurate: the two of us do share a dislike for David Brooks, though mine is much keener. Brooks came back with a jolt in his latest column to remind me of why: he gives Sarah Palin accolades for a debate a little prematurely.

Mind you, Times columns go to print (or get "posted" on the "world wide web" if you're one of those young people with iPods or cell phone cameras) shortly after midnight of that day's issue. The Biden-Palin throwdown ended at 10:30 pm, so the column was either (a) premeditated or (b) conceived and written in about fifteen minutes. Neither would surprise me, but I'm going with (a).

There she was, resplendent in black,

'There she is, your ideal ... the dreams of a million girls ... "

Sorry, what? We're picking someone to lead the (barely) most powerful nation in the world? Okay, then.

striding out like a power-walker,

So she walked onto the stage, just like people who walk in walking competitions.

and greeting Joe Biden like an assertive salesman, first-naming him right off the bat.

First-naming is a stupid excuse for a verb. Also, Brooks sees this moment, when Palin asks "May I call you Joe?" as vitally important. Why? Because he's an idiot. But he's just getting started:

Just as the midcentury psychologist Abraham Maslow predicted, Republicans watching the debate had a hierarchy of needs.

WHAT? Brooks' point is that they needed her to appear competent, and also (less importantly) to stem the tide moving towards Obama if she could. These are two needs (more like wishes or preferences, though, if we're being honest) and they're somewhat in a hierarchical order. But this has zero to do with Abraham Maslow. His "hierarchy" was about the relationship of basic human needs with self-esteem and self-actualization. You can't just think of two needs and say, "Ooh, I'll cite Abraham Maslow and people will think I'm smart" -- it doesn't work that way.

Her perpetual smile served as foil to Biden’s senatorial seriousness.

Seriousness? Ewww ...

As the historian Ellen Fitzpatrick pointed out on PBS Thursday night, if, in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro had spoken in the relentlessly folksy tones that Palin used, she would have been hounded out of politics as fundamentally unserious.

Far be it from me to question an honest-to-goodness historian, especially one on PBS, but:

(1) Geraldine Ferraro was kinda hounded out of politics as fundamentally unserious anyway. The Mondale/Ferraro ticket won one state, and Ferraro never became a Senator or Governor, never got any prominence in the national Democratic Party, and is now going on arguably racist rants against Barack Obama. So, what's the point again?

(2) Sarah Palin may yet be hounded out of politics as fundamentally unserious, and if she's not, doggone it, our country shouldn't be cheerin' and braggin' about that.

(3) David Brooks should be hounded out of journalism as fundamentally unserious. Literally, with actual hounds. East Coast elite hounds, too, not the red-blooded Middle America hounds that he loves so dearly.

But that was before casual Fridays, boxers or briefs and T-shirt-clad Silicon Valley executives. Today, Palin can hit those colloquial notes again and again, and it is not automatically disqualifying.

I first read this column in my office on Friday, wearing a button-down shirt with no tie, new-ish Gap jeans, and even boxer shorts. And yet, I'd still like a Vice-President to be familiar with multiple Supreme Court decisions, and/or the Bush doctrine. Call me crazy.

On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it.

Probably the worst sentence in an absolute wasteland of a column.

From her first “Nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?” she made it abundantly, unstoppably and relentlessly clear that she was not of Washington, did not admire Washington and knew little about Washington.

First-naming Joe Biden did all that? Wow. Also, shit like this drives me crazy. She's not of Washington ... fine. She doesn't admire Washington ... ok. But why are we proud of her for knowing little about Washington? Even if I accepted that "Washington" were some sort of tangible entity that was fundamentally bad, shouldn't she know about it, in order to defeat it? Reading Brooks makes my head hurt.

Like the last debate, this one was surprisingly wonky — a lifetime subscription to Congressional Quarterly.

I love that he says "surprisingly wonky" -- like he expected Biden and Palin to tell knock-knock jokes and brush each other's hair while of course calling each other "Sarah" and "Joe", but instead some sort of candidate evaluation thingy they call a debate broke out. Anyway, I don't think there's anything particularly wonky about two people accusing each other back and forth of raising taxes 38,742 times.

Palin could not match Biden when it came to policy detail, but she never obviously floundered.

Shouldn't we be applauding the guy who knew more policy detail? Isn't that kind of the point of this whole exercise? And it sure seemed to me like she floundered, plenty of times.
But what do I know, I'm just a guy who watched the debate BEFORE reaching my conclusions.