The candidate with the hardest job tonight, unfortunately, isn't Sarah Palin. It's Joe Biden.
He has to showcase his extensive experience, without discussing it extensively. He has to restrain himself from responding too harshly to the inevitable attacks from Palin, while at the same time aggressively defending both his own reputation and Sen. Obama's. He has to ignore Palin as much as humanly possible, without coming off like John McCain did last week in refusing to look at his opponent. He has to avoid at all cost any remark about her femininity, no matter how complimentary or innocent he might think it is.
For the senator who pushed through the Violence Against Women Act, it is a strange irony that gender sensitivity is not his strong suit.
The McCain campaign has done a terrific job of lowering expectations below sea level for their veep nominee, going as far as to discredit the moderator herself of tonight's debate, Gwen Ifill. What's hilarious about how the right wing has gone after Ifill over—gasp—a book she is writing about black politicians, is that when she moderated the 2004 veep debate, Cheney got the easiest time of it.
When Ifill asked the vice-president why he kept tying Iraq to 9/11 in his public statements, and even read him a quote proving such, Cheney lied directly to her face and said he had never said any such thing, or made any such connection. The next evening at a PBS roundtable, I watched Ifill admit that she knew the vice-president had just lied to her, but she felt that she could not say that at a debate that she herself was moderating.
Never mind, Ms. Ifill, that you asked the question to begin with, so you would hardly have been defending Sen. Edwards by responding to Cheney's lie. When the vice-president lied to you on national television, he wasn't just making a mockery of the truth, and the American people—he was making a mockery of you.
No wonder the McCain people signed off in August on Ifill moderating this debate, even though her book had already been announced in July. They knew how easily she could be pushed over. I hate to say it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens tonight.
