Take it from someone who knows first hand, and says pretty much the same thing:
When he faces off against Sarah Palin Thursday night, Joe Biden will have his hands full.
I should know. I've debated Governor Palin more than two dozen times. And she's a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the nonanswer, the glittering generality. Against such charms there is little Senator Biden, or anyone, can do.
This is the testimony of Andrew Halcro, an independent candidate in Alaska's 2006 gubernatorial contest in which Palin was victorious. It was in her debates with Halcro and former Democratic governor Tony Knowles that Palin gained her reputation as a "successful" debater, despite her seeming inability to string coherent arguments together even then. Halcro watched her style carefully, and close up, and he makes a convincing argument that Palin was unwilling or unable to actually answer most if not all of the questions put to her.
And yet, she won the race. And to hear the press tell it, the debates, too. How can that be?
As I argued earlier, I think it's rooted in the nature of the debating format versus the interview format, and in traditions of journalistic debate coverage. Interview answers are open ended, and can be followed-up with more precise questioning if warranted. That means Palin has to think on her feet while she's answering, and that seems to be where her weaknesses are most readily exposed. Debate answers are finite, capped in this case at 90 seconds, and follow-up opportunities will be severely curtailed. The rules of the debate prohibit Biden from doing it, and the McCain camp is already aggressively "working the refs" to try to make sure that debate moderator Gwen Ifill feels constrained from doing so, too.
Without the twin pressures of open ended and follow-up questioning, Palin is free to execute her game plan: filling the air with the squid ink of buzzwords and whatever pre-planned and focus group-tested soundbites she's able to bring to mind and thinks bear at least some tangential relation to the question asked.
Listen to Halcro tell it:
Palin is a master of the nonanswer. She can turn a 60-second response to a query about her specific solutions to healthcare challenges into a folksy story about how she's met people on the campaign trail who face healthcare challenges. All without uttering a word about her public-policy solutions to healthcare challenges.
That's it, in a nutshell. And that's what we'll likely see from Palin on Thursday. And if you know it's coming, it can be, as I argued before, like hearing the Wilhelm Scream jump right off the movie theater screen at you. Only here's the thing: if the political press aren't hip to the joke, they won't get it. Observe:
On paper, the difference in experience on both domestic and foreign policy is like the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet. Unfortunately for Biden, if recent history is an indicator, experience or a grasp of the issues won't matter when it comes to debating Palin.
On April 17, 2006, Palin and I participated in a debate at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks on agriculture issues. The next day, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner published this excerpt:
"Andrew Halcro, a declared independent candidate from Anchorage, came armed with statistics on agricultural productivity. Sarah Palin, a Republican from Wasilla, said the Matanuska Valley provides a positive example for other communities interested in agriculture to study."
Again, Halcro nails it. The professional political press too often feels constrained from calling it as they see it. I'm sure that no one watching the debate objectively -- as the press are supposed to be doing -- could have written that and also answered the question of whether Palin's answers were qualitatively as good as Halcro's. It's obvious from what's written that they were not. And yet, no clear pronouncement of Halcro of the winner.
And in these debates, there hardly ever is. Because declaring a winner based on the substantive answers feels partisan, even when it's not. So instead, you get coverage like this. Halcro mops the floor with Palin on substance, and the reportage actually equates Palin's folk tale with Halcro's studied and substantive response.
La la la! See? We're all friends here!
Nonsense. Palin got blown out of the water by any real measure. Even the much-circulated YouTube videos purporting to show that she's a surprisingly competent debater don't show anything different than what Halcro is describing here. To be sure, Palin does not fall out of her chair, doesn't mispronounce anything obvious, doesn't burst into tears or cover her face in shame at any point during the debate. But that's not what "winning" a debate is actually supposed to mean. That's just the little "fair and balanced" box that the media -- largely because of aggressive "working of the refs" -- have been forced to cram debate scoring into. And the box is now known as the "expectations game." Nevermind what was actually said and what its relative worth was. Did it meet, exceed, or underperform "expectations"? That has become the only measure by which the bullied and beat-up media feel "safe" judging debates.
Another Halcro observation -- and my apologies to both Mr. Halcro and the Christian Science Monitor, which carried this piece, but they've hit the mother lode with this whole thing, and everyone needs to know it:
On April 18, 2006, Palin and I sat together in a hotel coffee shop comparing campaign trail notes. As we talked about the debates, Palin made a comment that highlights the phenomenon that Biden is up against.
"Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, 'Does any of this really matter?' " Palin said.
While policy wonks such as Biden might cringe, it seemed to me that Palin was simply vocalizing her strength without realizing it. During the campaign, Palin's knowledge on public policy issues never matured – because it didn't have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy.
Never matured. Never had to. And it likely hasn't in the past few weeks, either, because even when in the national spotlight, Republicans like Palin (and to some extent, the "new" McCain, who long ago abandoned the Straight Talk Express, 2000-style campaign persona that made him famous) know that substance still doesn't matter so long as the press scores debates in their traditional fashion. Halcro knows that all too well. He's been sorely disappointed before, and sees it's likely to happen again.
And he's right. But for one strange anomaly in this race: the deference that usually moves the press to score debates -- and indeed entire campaigns -- this way has been missing up to this point, with respect to Palin. The McCain camp has been doing their damnedest to blame this on "liberal media bias," and less successfully, in previous weeks, on "sexism." But I think it has more to do with the fact that many of them are seeing this phenomenon in the rawest form they've ever witnessed, due to Palin's lack of polish. Normally, no Republican aspirant is exposed to them in this way without first having proven her mettle on her way up what is ordinarily a much, much longer ladder.
And so it has happened that the national media are in fact discussing the stunning lack of substance in her answers. Or at least, they have been, with respect to her disastrous interviews. Whether those observations will carry over and color the post-debate coverage remains to be seen. At some major outlets, the national reporters and opinion journalists who cover the campaigns in general are not necessarily the ones who'll be reviewing the debate performance. In other cases, the fear of appearing too partisan may preclude making the exact same observations about the exact same lack of substance that they've already made about her interviews, with respect to her debate performance, as incredible and as counterintuitive as that may be.
But the narrative is out there for them to build on if they dare, and we'll take a look at some examples of it next. Make no mistake, the leading traditional media outlets know very well that just because Palin responds to a question doesn't mean she's answered it. The question is whether they'll have the courage to say so after being dogged for weeks by McCain's people not to say so after the debate.
UPDATE: O. M. G.
This tape is stunning. She can't name another Supreme Court case that she disagrees with (or likely one she agrees with, either, let's be honest). But notice what she does. Can't think of one, so she instead makes two mentions of the "great history of America," launches into some sort of half-assed states rights screed, throws in -- yet again -- a plea to be "so privileged" to be elected with John McCain, and tries to assert that she'd then be in a position to change the decisions she doesn't know about and can't name.
Word spray. Squid ink. Gibberish.
With Couric there to prod her, it's a stunning embarrassment. With a 90 second clock running, no applause allowed, and no opportunity for follow up, it's "holding your own."
Unless the traveling press finds its courage, somehow.
Please. You folks can spare us a lot of agony if you'll just say what we all know you're thinking.
UPDATE 2: Just by way of compiling all the last few days' documentary evidence in one place:
