If nothing else, this should make tonight’s debate interesting to say the least:
ST. LOUIS — Sarah Palin plans to go on the attack in tonight’s debate, hitting Joe Biden for what she will call his foreign policy blunders and penchant for adopting liberal positions on taxes and other issues, according to campaign officials involved in prepping her for tonight’s showdown.
The Palin camp is projecting surprising self-confidence in the pre-debate hours, despite the vice presidential nominee’s uneven — and, at some points, peculiar — performances in recent television interviews, the officials say. Top advisers to John McCain privately say Palin’s recent CBS interview was a borderline disaster, especially since it played out in several segments over several days. Tonight will be different, they say.
“This is going to finally put her back into a position where we see her like we saw her the first couple weeks,” a McCain official said. “She was herself. She was authentic, and people related to that. … Tonight, she’ll get into a rhythm. You’re going to see her in a way that you haven’t seen her yet.”
By contrast, Biden plans what an aide calls “a just-the-facts, prosecutorial approach laying out the case against McCain and defending Obama.” The aide said Biden will be “keeping the eye on the target, which is McCain.”
Under the circumstances, this would seem to be a fairly high-risk strategy for Palin to follow tonight.
If it works, she might score a few points against Biden and come out of it as the “winner” of the debate — but there’s very little historical evidence to suggest that this would have any significant impact on the Presidential race, and little reason to believe that it would divert public attention away from the economic issues that have been at the forefront of the campaign for more than two weeks now.
If it doesn’t work and Palin comes across badly before what is likely to be a larger national audience than the one thatwatched last week’s Presidential debate, then it could be fatal for her and damaging to McCain, who can’t afford many more setbacks right now.
More importantly, as Greg Sargent notes, an attack-mode strategy against Biden would not seem to be what Palin needs right now:
Palin’s most basic task tonight is merely to project even an elementary level of competence, something that’s eluded her so far, and it remains to be seen if going toe to toe with Biden on foreign policy is a good way to do that.
Indeed.
