The Vice-Presidential Debate

While it certainly isn't saying much, Palin did do better than I expected; her machine gun fire delivery ALMOST masked the vacuousness of her statements. She was helped along by a format change, pushed through by Republicans, that limited both answer time and talk between the candidates (forgive me for misunderstanding what a 'debate' was). It was clear, however, that she was delivering canned answers only partially related to the questions, triggered by keywords. She herself, hoping to dispel criticism, addressed this early on, saying, (roughly) "I may not answer the questions the way Biden or the moderator want them to be...but I'm gonna tell you about my background." This turned out to be the most honest statement she made all night, surpassing "How long have I been at this? Five weeks?"

It was clear who her target audience was--she never failed to mention "Joe six-pack and hockey moms," and I laughed when she said, "main streeters like me." I had to gasp for air when, with blatant disregard for conservative talking points, she made a point with which I agreed: that predatory lending practices were largely responsible for the financial meltdown we're currently experiencing. Then again, you don't get far in politics telling people that the situation they are in is their fault.

Brushing aside the irony of a Neo-Con in training saying, "Patriotic is saying, 'Government, you're the problem'" (which, at least during the Bush years, would make me the most patriotic person on the planet), I have to note, as others have, that when you elect people who believe that government is inherently ineffective, you cannot be shocked when you get leaders who are incapable of governing.

Biden, for his part, did very well, though he was seldom able to mask his incredulity at some of Palin's remarks (his facial expressions were priceless). While he occasionally dove into wonkish detail, he hit his stride, hammering into the minds of voters the similarities between Bush and McCain. I particularly liked the way he couched the taxation of medical benefits under McCain's health care plan, although soon after he fumbled on the issue of tax shelters. He truly shone comparing an unstable Pakistan to a nuclear Iran (and I wholly agree that an unstable Pakistan is more problematic); Palin was clearly out of her league (in everything, but on foreign policy particularly). However, Brendan doesn't like it when politicians refer to themselves in the third person, as in "Nobody is a bigger friend to Israel than Joe Biden."

For me, maybe because I've read a couple studies on political psychology recently, the major cringe inducing moment in Biden's performance was his quip, (in retort to Palin's "freedom on the march" George Bush regurgitation) "The only thing on the march is Iran to the bomb." The reason I cringed at what might otherwise be a cogent remark is this:

"Threats to mortality have also shown to increase the appeal of the conservative party, even among liberals. For instance, a 2004 study by Florette Cohen and colleagues asked participants whether they preferred George W. Bush or John Kerry in the upcoming presidential election. Some participants first filled out a survey about how watching television made them feel and others filled out a questionnaire about how death made them feel. Those who had been emotionally primed with thoughts of death were strongly in favor of Bush, whereas those who had been primed with thoughts of television were strongly in favor of Kerry. This finding is consistent with what's known as 'terror management theory,' which holds that people use ideology to protect themselves psychologically from paralyzing fears of dying."

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Republicans are so good at winning elections, they know how to frame arguments in ways that trigger the lower, reptilian portions of the brain, precluding reasoned thought.

Still, I'm not sure that the debates will have made much of a difference. From the same link as above, researchers examined the brains of political partisans exposed to contradictory statements made by candidates of their own party. Dubbed "motivated reasoning," the thrust is this:

"Not only were the participants unable to see the contradiction for their own candidate, but the neuroimaging showed that they were regulating their emotional response...Essentially, participants detected the contradiction in their reasoning, but they weren't allowing it to affect their opinion...There's more. Westen showed the participants yet another slide, this one offering a rationale for the earlier contradiction: large areas in the ventral striatum became active, suggesting that participants were rewarding themselves for working through the problem. This combination of the suppressed negative emotions and reward for reaching a biased conclusion 'suggests why motivated judgments may be so difficult to change,' Westen wrote. 'They are doubly reinforcing.'"