Thats a concern, but I’d think that Obama and the secret Service are aware of the threats they may face. I certainly would be if i were Obama.
if Biden calls her Governor or Ms. Palin, and she do the folksy downhome BS, I think it will really be bad for her. I’m just guessing, but I think people are getting fed up with BS answers that aren’t really answers. Couric even said in her interview with Palin “answer the question”.
I also agree…Joe shouldn’t go easy on her.
Apologies if someone has already answered this but I don’t see it upthread.
The VP debate will not be in the same format as the Presidential debate. This format is supposedly easier for Palin to deal with. What, exactly, are the changes and why would they benefit Ms Palin?
I don’t think the candidates will address each other directly, meaning she wouldn’t have to think on her feet as much or answer questions from Biden. The rules will be more like typical presidential debates as opposed to last week’s Obama-McCain debate, where the candidates were encouraged to talk directly to each other.
True enough, but honestly? JFK had SS protection. So did Ronald Reagan. This shit happens. If he wins, I am concerned for his life.
The info re the VP debate is at the very end of this article.
changes made to accommodate Palin The GOP didn’t want her to engage in discussion. WTH? The VPs job is to talk to people–all kinds of people.
What does it say that changes had to be made for her? As a woman, I don’t like that. Sure, change the bathroom (ie take out the urinals) so I can use it, but this sort of thing shouldn’t be changed.
Shorter question and answer segments, less free exchange between the candidates.
I actually think this is a mistake by the McCain campaign. I think Palin has a woman problem. I think she’s far more likely to be thrown off her game by the female debate moderator than she is by directly sparring with Biden. My impression of her (admittedly based on her very meager interview evidence) is that she feels more comfortable talking to men and feels like she can bullshit them better. She probably feels like she can’t use all the tools in her toolbox when she’s talking with a woman and may even feel disliked by other women. It’s not that she likes men better than women, but that she feels like she has more power over men than women. Obviously, a WAG, but I really do think that was a big part of the Couric interview disaster.
So it will be more like:
Question-- stump speech segment-- rebuttal?
Palin’s interviews to this point have been terrible, but again, it’s worth noting that everybody plays the expectation game before debates. Right now it sounds like some Dopers will be impressed if she doesn’t drool all over her shirt. Four years ago, before one debate (probably the first) Kerry’s people put out word to the press that they were concerned about his answers running long, which would have caused an embarrassing red light over his podium to go off. In point of fact, he’d worked on that issue hard and didn’t go over the time limit once. He remained John Kerry, of course.
Shorter segments and less back-and-forth, but what that really means I’m not entirely sure.
Gwen Ifill is one of my favorite journalists and I expect her to be extremely professional. She’s neither an attack-dog nor a pushover, so this will be a great test for both Biden and Palin.
I can see her as this type of woman easily. I will have to see more of her inter acting with both genders to be more certain. I have no doubt she plays up her “assets” to a certain extent. Perhaps she took notes from Kathleen Harris?
Having a female moderator may well throw off this little game (if she pulls it–I’m still not certain of that).
Palin may not come out looking bad at all if she can calibrate which part of her stump speech she can shoehorn in to the question and/or rebuttals. She is not bad at all when scripted.
I imagine index cards on her podium with headings like:
Domestic- energy:
Drill baby, drill.
Domestic- taxes:
Bridge to nowhere.
Foreign- Europe
Do not mention Putin’s head!
I’m sure she can remember the relevant parts of the speeches she gave that fit. And she can charm with her folksy downhomeness. Biden, however, is a bulldog who doesn’t even bother with lipstick. Just like McCain came off as rude for not looking at or interacting with Obama, Biden can come off looking like-- Biden.
Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg…and I don’t live in Canada. 
But seriously, that’s not the best analogy. You couldn’t expect your average Joe on the streets to name a bunch of Canadian cities unless he was a Canadian…but Palin should be, at this point if we continue the analogy, someone who has studied Canadian geography. She had just made the assertion that McCain had been fighting these lending practices, and was called on it. It would be like if a Canadian geography student had just said “There are a lot of large cities in Canada” and then was asked to name some other than Toronto and Montreal. She should have had more than the one example if she was making such an assertion.
I mentioned this in another thread but I wonder if the low expectations game will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if played too hard. People, watching the debate to see Palin fuck up, will be more apt to take any relatively minor gaffe and blow it out of proportion to justify their pre-conceived notions. She could put forth a mediocre but defendable performance and people will still latch onto any misstep as the next “Bush Doctrine Moment” if they’re convinced that one is coming.
I just slapped this together for some cow-orkers, allow me to share:
Thursday night in a nut-shell:
Moderator: Governor Palin, how would you handle the Iraq war?
Palin: Well, it’s important for the United States of the America to be, well to lead, when the Middle of East has terrorists. And we are in a War on Terror, so when Democracy and freedom, which is important for health care and job creation, which, I mean John McCain is for jobs. And Al Qaida of course … um … Pakistan and Afghanistan and … um … Putin … uh … We must win in Iraq.
Moderator: Uuuuuuuh …. Okay. Thank you, Governor. Senator Biden, how you handle the Iraq war?
Biden: Well it’s clear, just as General Patton led the Union Army against the Boers in the War of 1812, that complete victory must be achieved, otherwise Islamabad, the Capital of Hamas, obviously will never be safe. I quote Admiral Eisenhower, who said, “Give me Democracy or give me the Bay of Pigs.”
Moderator: I quit.
Your Biden line has to be at least three times longer.
I couldn’t come up with that many factual errors.
Sounds like what I came up with earlier today for a coworker:
Gwen Ifill: Governor Palin, how would you handle the Iraq war?
Palin: Um. Win! crickets
Ifill: Could you be more specific?
Palin: Um. Don’t lose because the Democrats want to lose and are willing to lose in Iraq and we say no to losing it Iraq, it’s not acceptable to lose in Iraq.
Ifill: Senator Biden? Same question.
Biden: What my good friend John, I call him John because we’re good friends with the old John McCain but this John McCain isn’t that John McCain and what happened to that John McCain I ask you? He says he invented the Blackberry and I used a Blackberry and got an email from Nigeria and that’s what John’s ideas are like for Iraq a Nigerian scam HA HA HA. He doesn’t understand that it was the awakening not the surge he talks about the surge as if it did everything but the awakening, well, I was in Iraq in 1905 and we saw the awakening first hand and they did what we had said they needed. Specialization! Just like I said!
Sounds like you’ve dug in your heels and are refusing to admit you may be wrong.
Here’s a fact you may have overlooked:
“Still, we have had a woman running for the vice presidency – Geraldine Ferraro on the 1984 Democratic ticket – and her sparring with then-incumbent V.P. George H.W. Bush holds the record for Nielsen ratings of vice presidential debates: 56.7 million viewers.”
The argument(s) that follows – that Palin has been shielded by the media, thus interest in her is quite high; that the race is extremely close; that her lack of experience is a huge question for voters – seem compelling to me. But then I’m not an expert at these things like you appear to be.
PS – Attacking the messenger instead of the message? I would think a moderator on these boards could do better than that.
Here’s my totally sexist advice to Sarah Palin:
Show cleavage. Lots of it. That way most men won’t listen to a word you say.
In every interview of Biden that I’ve seen since she was picked, Joe has referred to her as “the governor”. Not “Sarah”, not “Ms. Palin,” not even “Governor Palin” – as “the governor.”