by Jason Horowitz on October 2, 2008
“I may not answer the questions the way either you or the moderator want to hear,” she said. “But I’m going to speak straight to the American people.”
In her closing remarks, she suggested she’d like to debate again and answer questions “without the filter of the mainstream media.”
What she wanted to do was talk about taxes and energy (and energy, and energy). She delivered polished attack lines with derision, and made check-marks on the papers on her podium.
“I want to talk about my record on energy,” she said, at one point. “I want to come back to energy,” she said at another. She talked about the need for “energy independence” and then later said, “We’ve got to become energy-independent.”
She said that she was a “governor of a huge energy-producing state.” And when the moderator, Gwen Ifill, finally posed an energy question, about the role of man-made energy use on the environment, she said, “I don’t want to argue about the causes.”
Joe Biden, on the other hand, wanted to talk, above all, about John McCain. He criticized McCain’s judgment on the war and his opposition to regulation, which Biden said allowed Wall Street to “run wild.”
The two treated each other politely throughout.
Palin, wearing a black blouse and jacket and sparkling broach, and Biden, wearing a black pinstripe suit and blue tie, first met in the middle of the stage.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “And can I call you Joe?” He said of course. He called her “governor.”
The first question went to Biden, who was asked if the economic crisis brought out the worst or best in Congress. He said it had more to do with the difference in the economic philosophies between the Republicans, who concentrated, he said, on corporate interests, and a new Obama administration. “We’re going to focus on the middle class,” he said.
Palin, in her first remarks, tried to frame the question in personal terms, saying that soccer moms knew things were bad and that “the federal government has not provided sound oversight.”
Palin then got folksy. She called herself the “new energy,” said it was “darn right” that the cause of the economic crisis were predatory lenders. She addressed “Joe Six-Pack and hockey moms across the nation.” She said, “It is not the American people’s fault,” but that they were learning lots of lessons. Later, she referred to “Main-Streeters like me.”
At another point, she said, “It’s just so obvious that I’m a Washington outsider,” because she didn’t understand how experienced politicians like Biden could have been for the war in Iraq by voting to authorize it before they were against it. “I think we need a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street brought to Washington,” she said.
She referred to her inexperience only once, saying that the economic crisis wouldn’t force her to take back any promises because she had only been on the trail for “five weeks” and hadn’t made many promises. John McCain, she said, wouldn’t either.
Biden tried to throw in some anecdotes himself, talking about a man he met at a gas station, and the people struggling at his local Home Depot, but for the most part he gave in-depth answers that sought, almost always, to criticize John McCain. Only once, and indirectly, did he jab at Palin, calling McCain’s health care plan “the ultimate bridge to nowhere.”
Instead, several times, Palin sought to engage Biden, alluding incredulously to a statement he made about how paying taxes was an act of patriotism. And on foreign policy, she said, “Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq.” She accused Biden of playing the “blame game,” and argued that for a ticket that talks about change, they spent too much time talking about George Bush and the past.
But that attack let Biden, time and again, to restate the Obama campaign’s theme of change versus stasis, saying that on Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and Pakistan, McCain was the same as George Bush. “We will make significant change.”