Ok, I’m on board with the unimpressiveness of Palin (although she exceeded the exceptionally low expectations of her in the debate), but this is silly. How does a proclivity to use “doggone it” or “gee whiz” in conversation disqualify you from Executive Office?
Don’t get me wrong, she’s tragically unqualified. But not because of her “homey” speech patterns.
She opened by saying 'I got this crap memorized and the answers may not sound like I am actually answering the question. I am not able to modify to give a direct answer.? "
thanks for listening. You betcha.
She may not be unqualified because of her speech patterns, but she’s using that to appeal to the hockey/soccer moms and joe sixpack who find it adorable.
Noocuelar?! Jesus Christ…no one called her on that? For once, I’d just like to see a moderator or opponent make a remark!
Jeannie Moos on CNN this morning caught it. She also showed two separate groups of people (Dems and Pubs) and their reactions to the same things. When she made reference to soccer moms and also when she did the “shout-out” to the 3rd grade class, the Dems groaned. The Pubs cheered.
I don’t think that anyone would call her on that. It’s a bit controversial even here on the Dope as to whether it’s a regional pronunciation or the sign of someone who can’t read. 
My biggest disappointment with the debate: My friggin’ DVR cut out the candidate’s summations. Talk about Debatus Interuptus.
My thoughts … (culled almost directly from an email to my misguided consrvative friend this morning - I suppose this is as good a place as any):
Biden was more knowledgeable, and he was pretty restrained – didn’t really say one stupid thing. He did his fair share of saying what he wanted to say without really answering the question. But Palin did that all night and it irritated the hell out of me. At one point she said something like, “I’m not going to answer the question the way you or the way the moderator want me to ….” I was thinking, then why the hell are you here?
But I still just can’t get past her grating voice, and her little “you betcha’s” and “gosh darnit’s” … when she said, “Say it ain’t so Joe.” I wanted reach through the TeeVee and throttle her.
Conventional wisdom I’ve heard all over the media is that Biden won, but Palin exceeded expectations. But still. She was not that good. She didn’t have much of a bar to clear.
All in all, this dog and pony show is over. I doubt we’ll see too much ripple in the poll numbers. We’ll see of Barack and John can start calling each other fuck-heads or something and get things interesting again.
I have two responses to this: On one hand I personally don’t think Golly-Gee-Wizz talk belongs in a vice presidential debate. It makes me feel like I cannot trust what she is saying, it makes me feel like she is not taking the debate or infact her position seriously. It takes away from the substance of what she says. I’m not looking for her to connect with soccer moms, I’m looking for leadership and a firm grasp of the issues this country needs to concentrate on. Golly Gee Wizz Beaver, did you do your chores? - has little place in the politics of high office IMHO.
Second, her incessant, almost overly excessive reading of her crib notes gave her little room for her golly gee wizz comments. She needed to redirect her thought pattern halfway through the debate to seemingly increase her golly gee wizz attitude because she knew she was completely out matched with Biden, she kept falling back on golly gee wizz as some sort of comfort blanket.
Can you picture her with Iran’s Ahmadinejad [the only name apparently she wrote in her crib notes because she said 30 times, she must have practicea lot in front of a mirror.] saying well Mr. Ahmadinejad, GOLLY, that reminds me of this that or the other thing? I can’t.
What could she have possibly done? I think no reaction was probably the best reaction of all – anything else would have been condescending (or acknowledged that he had just as much claim to middle America.
The women I watched the debate with didn’t even notice her reaction to him choking up. Or her post-debate family time. There was just too much to focus on in her actual fighting words.
The ‘didn’t do her homework but is trying to sound like she knows what she’s talking about’ observation is spot on. Forget her accent and winks, you could read a transcript and there’d be no question who won.
Not only that, but when she winked to her dad in the audience, I thought she was going to wave, and say, “Hi Mom! We’re number 1!” like football players do. But Alaska doesn’t have an NFL team, so maybe that’s why she didn’t. Do hockey players do that though?
Many people, particularly those who retain distinct regional accents, simply pronounce words the way they heard them growing up. Jimmy Carter is a good example. Surely he heard nuclear pronounced as it is spelled many times at the Naval Academy. He stuck with his regional pronunciation, and apparently didn’t feel that it mattered enough to try to change.
Do you know any intelligent people who pronounce “ask” as “ax”? I do.
Yes. Then they punch you in the face and step on your groin.
Biden didn’t knock his response out of the park - he was factually wrong on several points.
[Quote=Biden]
Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.
And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.
The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.
[/QUOTE]
First of all, Article I doesn’t explicitly place the Vice-President in the Executive Branch - it couldn’t clearly do so since that article deals with legislative branch authority. It does explicitly make the Vice-President President of the Senate. This is a role he holds any time he is present in the chamber, and is ceded to the president pro tempore when he is not. It is not reserved for tie votes, though in practice this is often the only time that the Vice-President actually goes to the Hill.
It is why the Vice-President sits with the Speaker of the House behind the President during the State of the Union address - he is representing the Senate here, not the Administration (at least constitutionally). And in another example, Al Gore served as President of the Senate when the Electoral College votes were formally accepted in 2000. That was not a tie vote in the least.
I’m on record here as stating that Cheney’s actions were wrong, and in fact they didn’t go anywhere. But Biden was just factually wrong when he stated his case against Cheney, and he didn’t need to go at such lengths to do so.
The election won’t turn on this by any means, but frankly Palin was closer to the truth than Biden was. The Constitution gave very few explicit powers to the Vice-President. We can regard that as flexibility, I suppose. I personally regard it as benign neglect. Whatever the institution has been made of in the last fifty years (before that is was rather insignificant) was because of the men who held it and the presidency.
No, I don’t. I know several rather dim people that say it and one or two people who say it on occassion to get a rise out of me. (They know that really irritates me) But I don’t know any intelligent people who seriously say ‘ax’ when they mean ‘ask’.
Because she sounds tragically unintelligent. She might as well be sprinkling her speech with “dude” and “sweeeeeet”. Probably all of us speak more casually in casual situations. A political debate isn’t a casual situation and an intelligent person would grasp that ( I’m refering to her, not you).
Yeah, I would have liked to have seen a little more follow-up to that.
Article 2 clearly states thet the VP is in the Executive branch. Article 1 defines his role in the senate (as Biden correctly states), but does not sau he’s a member of the Legislative branch. That’s obviously BS.
Biden is also right that the only power a VP has in the Senate is to vote in the event of a tie.
The fact that this power hungry, megalomaniacal, uneducated religious zealot from Alaska wants to find a way to further pervert the Constitution to give herself some kind of power over the Legislature is terrifying.
Speaking of terror, did any see the Couric clip where Palin endorsed Hamas? I’m amazed that hasn’t gotten more coverage. If Obama had done that, he’d be getting crucified.
They use a different finger.
I don’t think it’s disaqualifying, per se. I just find it smarmy and unctious and ingratiating and phony. The wink takes it to whole new levels of obnoxious. My wife instinctively wanted to smack her in the face whenever she did that.
It was interesting watching the CNN instant reaction, knob twisty thing during the debate. The had it broken up into men and women. Women hated her, and everytime she pulled that folksy crap (especially when it involved some smug insult), her graph with women just dove.
For some reason a lot of righties seem to think Palin turned a corner last night. I think they’re going to be in for a shock when the poll numbers role in.
According to the polls taken immediately afterwards, yes. But once the pundits weighed in with their “analysis” of Gore’s heavy sighing, the conventional wisdom shifted until most people thought that Gore had made a fool of himself.
Damn liberal media!
Well I guess I’m Joe Six-Pack, as you so delicately put it. Judge much?
I think she held her own. I’m still not voting for the Pubs, but given the press prior to the debates, overall, I was impressed by her performance.