Who Won the Vice Presidential Debate, Joe Biden or Sarah Palin?

If you tuned into the Vice Presidential debate seeking a good old-fashioned, mud slinging affair ala Gore-Quayle or Cheney-Edwards, or in search of "gaffes" or "zingers", boy, were you watching the wrong channel. While there were numerous disagreements between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, the pair maintained their dignity and poise and debated the issues. Sort of. Sarah Palin dodged a few questions, mainly concerning domestic policies on the government bailout, repeatedly referring to "energy independence" or "tax cuts" to create jobs, instead of directly addressing the question.

However, Sarah Palin's overall performance was very solid, if not spectacular. Was Sarah Palin able to win votes from undecided voters due to the expectations for her debate performance being so low that she would have exceeded expectations simply by not falling off the podium? I don't know about that, but anyone expecting a meltdown on a bigger scale than Palin's recent interviews with Katie Couric are sure to be disappointed.

Sarah Palin appeared confident, stayed calm and appeared to have a decent grasp of some issues, especially when it came to energy policy and relating to middle class voters. On the other hand, Palin stumbled on other questions, never answering some queries and dropping the ball on a question about a Vice President's duties. As Joe Biden pointed out nicely, a Vice President presides over the Senate but votes only in case of a tie as spelled out by the constitition. In short, Sarah Palin seemed to be unsure of what it is a Vice President actually does.

When in doubt, Palin's strategy seemed to be to fall back on tax cuts and energy independence without offering specifics. For his part, Joe Biden kept returning to his contention that John McCain would give Exxon/Mobil $4 billion in new tax cuts.

Rather than attack one another, the two VP candidates turned their fire towards the top of the other ticket. Sarah Palin referred to Barack Obama's willingness to meet with rogue leaders of other nations as "naivete" and "beyond dangerous". She noted some differences Joe Biden had with his running mate, Barack Obama. However, when moderator Gwen Ifill confronted Palin with comments of hers differing from a John McCain policy all Palin could offer was "we're mavericks, ya' can't expect us to agree all the time".

Sarah Palin noted how as a "Washington outsider" she didn't understand Senate procedures. If Palin is elected VP, she might need to brush up on the policies and procedures that she would be presiding over. Palin was strongest when talking about her record in Alaska of reaching across party lines and taking on the oil companies. She was weakest when offering specifics of what she and John McCain would do if elected about health care other than talking about a $5,000 tax credit McCain was proposing. Joe Biden quickly criticized that proposal as not enough and claimed it would add another 5 million people to the number of unisured, which palin never rebutted.

Joe Biden was strongest when it came to discussing John McCain's record in the Senate, a record Biden obviously knows better than Sarah Palin since he's known McCain for many years while Palin had met McCain only once before being selected as his running mate. "John McCain is no maverick" Biden said when it came to McCain's record of voting with George W. Bush the last 8 years. Biden noted that he sponsored the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that John McCain opposed. Biden was weakest when he lapsed into Senate-speak in discussing various votes concerning the Iraq invasion. While Joe Biden never used the phrase made famous by John Kerry "I voted for that before I voted against it", he lost much of the audience according to polls when he discussed Senate procedure.

Sarah Palin returned to the surge in Iraq many times in the debate, at one point saying Obama and Biden's policy on Iraq was "running up a white flag of surrender". However, even GOP strategist Alex Castellanos on CNN noted that no Republican can score points with Americans talking about Iraq.

All in all, while Sarah Palin performed much better in the Vice Presidential debate than the public expected, 87% in a CNN Poll said so, 51% said Joe Biden won the debate to 38% for Sarah Palin. I would concur. Biden won due to reeling in his tendency to develop "foot in mouth disease" and offering more specifics than Sarah Palin.

That said, Sarah Palin may have won in a way, even if only by exceeding expectations. It would be a mistake to "misunderestimate" Palin's future political career to use a Bushism. If John McCain loses this election, expect Sarah Palin to jump to the front of the line in the discussion of 2012 GOP candidates for President. Palin will need to get better acquainted with national issues to succeed on a national scale, but if Ronald Reagan could get elected President, who knows?