Palin: Is Her Weakness Her Greatest Strength?

It's Sarah Palin. That sound you hear is thousands of reporters and oppo researchers tapping away at Google and shuffling through papers, trying to figure out what this beauty queen-cum-local pol is all about. There’s the state trooper flap. And the dangerous Stevens endorsement (gotta be worse than Rezko, right? Right??). And there’s the fact that she’s a complete greenhorn, utterly unfit to be a heartbeat (a 72 year-old cancer survivor’s heartbeat) away from the presidency.

But that last point, clearly the most important, valid reason to discount her candidacy, could prove to be a valuable asset. For one thing, the experience issue is utterly off the table for the Obama campaign this election. As convinced as Obama may be that his judgment and life experience qualify him to be president, he knows that it’s a losing topic for him. He has plenty of angles from which to attack McCain / Palin, but experience isn’t one of them. The trick for the Obama campaign all along has been to find ways to keep the word “experience” out of the national dialogue.

Fine, so they don’t have to say it. They can show it. After all, isn’t that what all writers are taught: show, don’t tell? About an hour ago, most Democrats’ mouths began watering and they circled Oct. 2 – the date of the Vice Presidential debates – on their calendars. After all, it’s a widely accepted fact that Biden will tear just about any challenger apart in a one-on-one debate. The man’s head is chock full of national security knowledge and his voting record a veritable Congressional history lesson, and he has a direct, candid, hard-hitting style that is borderline relentless.

There’s no question that Biden would win against Sarah Palin, but there’s a very real possibility that he won’t prevail against Palin. Thinking back to the Gore / Bush and Kerry / Bush debates, Bush was uninformed, a poor orator and generally dismantled by both Gore and Kerry. The vast majority of pundits and commentators had Bush losing those debates. But with each failure of a debate, Bush’s poll numbers rose. Republicans painted Democrats as arrogant and condescending. And, truthfully, it’d be damn hard not to condescend to George Bush.

Biden will have an exceptionally difficult time coming out of a debate with Sarah Palin without seeming condescending or preachy. For every verbal smack-down Biden issues, the GOP will issue statements that Biden was overbearing, cocky or “mean.” I can see it now – and it stands a very good chance of working. People’s hearts will go out to the “poor lady” who is getting schooled on national television by an aggressive older man. The Republicans will release YouTube videos using “Papa Don’t Preach” as a soundtrack. They will do everything they can to hold up her shortcomings as strengths, the same way they did with George W. Bush.

It’s a risky pick, to be sure – and it’s a gamble that the American people, having been fooled twice, will be rubes yet again. If there’s anything we love, it’s narratives about underdogs, come-from-nowhere triumphs, and young, charismatic beauty queens. I still believe that Jan 20, 2009 will inaugurate a President Obama, but the McCain campaign just laid down some tacks and maybe an oil slick on the raceway.