I disagree with Taylor Stockdale that pople drew a negative impression of his father from that debate. I remember people responding very favorably to him and a general consensus that he had made the best impression of all three participants. He was self-deprecating, direct and honest. He did not come off as polished or as a politician but people like that. He certainly never came off as either clueless or rambling the way Palin has. I remeber one question when he gave a short answer to a question, then when asked a follow up question, he said, “I’m out of ammo on that subject.” People appreciate that kind of honesty much more than someone trying to BS their way through when they clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. Adm. Stockdale never resorted to filler or memorized talking points either. Sarah Palin might have more substance than what we’ve seen, but she’s not in Stockdale’s class.
I don’t know a lot about Fareed Zakaria, so I don’t know what, if any, partisan biases he’s prone to. He’s the international editor of Newsweek, former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, and a Harvard-educated Ph.D. in political science (cite). Seems like a sharp guy.
Again, I think Palin is going to look OK in the debate. I don’t expect a Couric-style embarassment. But maybe, as jsgoddess notes, it really is too late for her to dig herself out of the hole she’s gotten into. If she does tank, maybe her leaving the ticket isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
We have very different memories. I remember that “Who am I?” thing being repeated endlessly as “evidence” that Stockdale was an incoherent, senile fool.
Now, in 1992, I was a Republican and I was mostly surrounded by Republicans, so maybe it was only amongst Republicans that he was trashed, but he was trashed.
I checked out his Wikipedia page and it agrees with my memory. God, I had forgotten the hearing aid moment. It makes me feel ill just remembering that debate.
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone suggest that experience is “irrelevant.” People will disagree, however, on exactly what constitutes “experience.” For example, does law school provide useful experience?
More importantly, while most Obama supporters feel he has sufficient “experience,” they also believe he has a number of other characteristics that are at least as important. Off the top of my head, he impresses me as extremely intelligent, well-informed, reasonable, articulate, compassionate, and I tend to share his values.
Perhaps you can identify Palin’s qualities/strengths that make any “lack of experience” on her part unimportant? Because I’m not seeing many, other than her gender/age and her ideological stance on some convervative issues.
I was too young to follow the election in '92 all that closely. I knew Clinton, Bush, and Perot were running, but VPs were beyond me. The one memory I have that anyone named Stockdale ran with Perot was a Saturday Night Live skit with Dana Carvey as Perot and Phil Hartman as Stockdale that took place after the VP debate, where Stockdale says nothing but incoherent gibberish and Perot winds up trying to dump him on the side of a county backroad.
So yeah, it wasn’t just among Republicans. 
My recollection could not be more different. As I recall it, the near-unanimous consensus was that he came across as a buffoon. Tho an extremely impressive individual, he had no business being in the position he was in. Woefully unprepared. Didn’t he have his hearing aid turned off at one point?
I recall a general sense of embarrassment for him, and a dislike for those who put him in that position.
Holy crap. McCain might as well have said “Pay no attention to the nitwit behind the curtain.”
My bad. Still trying to figure out this newfangled Internet-thing that all the kids play with nowadays.
Yikes does he look uncomfortable or what? Grimacing, looking off camera constantly, fidgeting with his thumbs.
He does not trust his running mate to talk out loud in public without a teleprompter. He was shitting bricks in that clip.
I remember polls saying people thought Stockdale had won the debate. Maybe Republicans trashed him (sour grapes carping during an elction they knew they were abut to lose), but Dems and independents didn’t.
You’re gonna need a cite for that - because this dem and all his little dem friends were merciless to the guy.
I remember it coming from both sides.
Republicans trashed him because they were afraid Perot would draw votes away from Bush (which he did) and Democrats trashed him for whatever reason was handy.
I was at Stanford and was privileged to hear him speak a couple of times at on-campus lectures. An impressive fellow, as his son tries to get across in the Op-Ed piece. But a square peg in a round hole as far as TV-ready debate material.
Apparently, Ms. Palin doesn’t know much about the Supreme Court:
http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/09/29/sarah-palin-has-heard-of-a-supreme-court-case/
I’d love to know the full context, but holy crap, if this is as it appears, and she and McCain win, she’d have to be the most willingly ignorant person to serve a high position in the US government.
If my vague memory of Diogenes biography is correct, I suspect that he was hanging around military bases in 1992. If correct, this may color his memories.
I can remember several comments that Stockdale “made more sense” than his opponents, (by using short answers and crying “gridlock!”), but I do not recall anyone actually claiming he had done well in the debate.
What I remember from military personel at the time (and while I was safely ensconced back in civilian life at the time, I knew a few guys who’d served in the Gulf War), was that they respected Stockdale for his biography and appreciated his non-BS answers. There were a surprising number of those guys (libertarian conservative types) who liked Perot himself for the same reason. They perceived him as someone who “told it like it was” (or at least gave the impression that he was). Clinton was a “draft dodger,” of course and Bush just did not excite anybody, and I think some people might be forgetting how much populist appeal the Perot campaign had at the time, regardless of what the media said about him.
I also think that there was probably a distinct difference in how people responded to Stockdale’s debate performance betweenpeople who knew his bio and people who did not. For instance, he had a hearing aid because he’d had his eardum punctured as a POW. People who knew that saw any ridicule of his hearing aid moment as the utmost douchebaggery.
More of Couric giving Palin enough rope to hang herself. When asked what newspapers and magazines she reads to keep up with current events, Palin replies (paraphrasing) “Pretty much all of them.” When pressed for specific sources she reads, Palin launches into a defense of Alaska, saying it’s not a foreign country and she keeps up with all the same events everyone in the rest of the country does. She never answers the question of what sources she reads. Couric briefly looks to someone off camera as if to say, “The hell?”
Which is worse: she doesn’t read newspapers; she doesn’t have the chutzpah to say, like George W Bush did, that she doesn’t read newspapers; or that she lacks even the wit and political skill to come up with a halfway plausible lie?
Poor Katie. She’s trying so hard to make this a nice, neutral fluffpiece and it’s like pulling teeth. As someone over on the Great orange Satan noted, “She’s like the love child of Forrest Gump and Phyllis Schlaffly”.
The hell, indeed!
One thing I’ve noticed is that Palin doesn’t stop and think before speaking. She just plunges right in. I’m a horrible off-the-cuff speaker and I’m pretty sure my responses to Couric’s questions would be just as bad, if not worse, than Palin’s. But one thing I’ve learned is that no one will hold it against you if you take a second or two to compose your thoughts before speaking. Pausing may not help but it can’t hurt.
She’s got to do better, dammit. I’m not in her corner, but the second-hand embarrassment is killing me!
Sweet Jesus. All she had to do was speak the title of one single newspaper or magazine and she couldn’t. It makes me weep to think what her target voter demographic must be like.
I completely agree. It’s amazing how long a pause seems in the mind of the speaker, who sometimes feels the need to rush out an answer. When you watch yourself on videotape, however, it’s more amazing how short it actually is as perceived by the listener. And it gives you precious moments to collect your thoughts.
This is, Um, like, you know, Public Speaking 101 stuff. Get a videotape recorder and practice with your family and friends around. It ain’t that hard. Who the hell is coaching this woman? Pay me $10 an hour and I’ll give a shot, for God’s Sake.