THE BIDEN-PALIN DEBATE: STYLE, SUBSTANCE, AND AMERICAN POLITICS

[Karen Anderson]

On balance, the only thing surprising about last night’s vice presidential debate was that Sarah Palin did not make any serious gaffes. After weeks of tutorials on policy issues and days of rehearsal, she played her part well. Using folksy language, winks and smiles, she tried to use charm to disguise the fact that she was evading many of the questions put to her while offering the same tired themes that have characterized Republican politics since 1980. Her well-scripted performance, combined with her extraordinary incompetence in recent interviews, suggests that she does not have the critical, reflective intelligence needed for leadership in this country. (Neither does our current president, but that ship has sailed.) As she did at the Republican National Convention, she provided the perky, appealing façade for some narrow class-based policies, including tax breaks for the rich and for corporations. I continue to be amazed that anyone could believe that the Republican Party represents working class Americans.

As a woman, I do not think that it serves the empowerment of women as a group to play on sexist expectations for women to be charming rather than substantive, properly subordinated to the man in charge (in this case, to John McCain) rather than capable of independent judgment and action, and flippant rather than serious when the state of the nation is so perilous. It also bothers me that Gwen Ifill raised no questions about women’s issues during the debate. This allowed Palin to serve as a visible symbol of women’s “progress” without making her at all accountable for where she stands on the wage gap, child care, equal opportunity enforcement, education, abortion rights, employment and training, welfare, and other issues of concern to women. I wish someone would ask conservatives how they think making abortion illegal will affect women’s lives and wellbeing.

For his part, Joe Biden generally handled the questions well, though he also evaded some, especially at the beginning. He did address her misrepresentations of his and Barack Obama’s positions well, offering facts (and noting that they actually matter) to refute her assertions. He showed himself to be much stronger on foreign policy issues, while Palin seemed to limit herself to claiming over and over again that the surge has worked and that only the Republicans support the troops. Biden’s almost uncritical support for Israel gives me concern though that position places him in the mainstream of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Finally, Palin’s charge that Obama does not support American troops and is flying “the white flag of surrender” in Iraq references conservatives’ efforts to claim that Obama is simply not “American” enough to serve as President. It evokes the militarism, flag-waving, false bravado, and “victory” culture that have distorted American politics for far too long. If Republicans really cared about enlisted men and women and their families, they might actually do something about the poverty that drives large numbers of them into the “all-volunteer” military to begin with. Of course, eliminating poverty would mean killing the goose that lays the golden eggs that staff our war machine. Instead, they sell those families a flag-waving hyper-nationalism while keeping the minimum wage low.

And they send perky Palin to sell their message. I, for one, am not buying.


Karen Anderson