Strategy

I had been curious to see how Sarah Palin would answer questions in a debate. What I hadn’t anticipated was the clever strategy employed by the McCain camp, which was to make sure she could avoid answering any questions – a strategy that the debate format indeed allowed. While Joe Biden gave us real insights about how his mind works in real time, Palin used the lax rules of the debate to negate the debate itself — responding to pretty much every question by choosing a pre-prepared speech to recite.

These prepared speeches often had little to do with the question that had been asked. Since she rarely answered the specific question posed by the moderator, Palin was able to avoid that strange deer-in-the-headlights quality with which we’ve grown familiar – the one she gets when she is required to respond directly to a direct question, without notes.

In a sense this meta-performance was fair. The McCain camp had forcefully pushed the organizers of the debate into modifying the rules so that recitation of pre-prepared speeches would be permitted. The Democrats had taken a hands-off policy during these negotiations, no doubt figuring that any changes would maintain a level playing field. The Democrats figured wrong. When you allow your opponents to define the terms of the debate, then you are giving them a way to nullify the purpose of the debate.

So now we know, just as we did before, that Republican strategists are very good at redefining rules, and at replacing actual events with puppet shows. But we still have no idea – apart from a few glimpses over the last week in interviews – what Sarah Palin might do when faced with a crisis that does not call for a prescripted response.

Let us hope, for the sake of our Nation’s well-being and security, that we never need to find out.