The Joke's Over?

"Did you hear the one about Sarah Palin and the...."

Chances are, you've heard a few sentences that started that way in recent weeks. Maybe they came from friends. Perhaps it was from the host of your favorite late night talk show. Lots of e-mails probably began that way.

But after last night's vice presidential debate, you won't hear near as much Sarah Palin humor.

Why? Well, she wasn't a flaming, unmitigated disaster. She wasn't great, but she wasn't the awful mess that her interviews leading up to the debate had made so many of us expect.

Democrats all over the country likely settled in to watch Palin get tangled in her own words and embarrass her party. Instead, they got a rigidly rehearsed speech crammed into a debate setting, with equally rehearsed folksy words and phrases tossed in for down-home effect. Not the stuff of genius, but also no blunders that will be played ad nauseum on cable news. The bits that we'll likely hear will come in the form of a highlight reel of her "Wasilla-isms".

But did she look presidential? Much has been made of the fright caused by her being just one breath from a 72 year old man in poor health away from leading the free world. And rightly so. In this area, nothing has changed. The thought of her as commander in chief still makes me want to check immigration laws for other countries.

However, I will admit that it is a bit easier to understand how she became the governor of the fourth least populated state in America. I've always heard it said that Alaskans are an odd bunch. She showed enough savvy on the stage in St. Louis to demonstrate how she convinced these quirky masses in the land of the midnight sun to put her in charge. But not much more than that. Decent, but not at all great

So how did she manage to make a respectable showing, when all recent indications were that she would get pummeled by an experienced guy like Joe Biden? We'll never know for sure what happened at the McCain home in Arizona during the Palin cram sessions. But I'm guessing that it must have made anything most of us experienced in college look small time. Imagine having Warren Buffet tutor you for an econ final.

So while Palin didn't swallow a bottle of genius pills, she did make as decent a showing as could be expected. The best outcome of this for the McCain campaign will be a reduction in Palin jokes, which will focus things for this last month of the campaign itself. That's not a bad situation for anyone. Good fodder for comedy is always nice. But there are issues in our country right now that are much more important than laughter generated by current events.

Now, as you always ask after debates...who won? Check with the debate coach at your old high school and I'm confident they would say that it was Biden. He was polished, overly polite, knowledgeable and followed proper debate procedure. And from an intellectual standpoint, he was FAR superior.

Palin avoided questions, inserting answers to items she wanted to discuss. She at one point told the moderator she wasn't going to stick to the requested topics, basically daring anyone to hold her feet to the fire. She also offered very few specifics. Her style above substance performance had the likes of Pat Buchanan giggling and giddy. But all of this does not constitute victory, and the polls conducted afterward clearly said Biden was the winner.