Ross Douthat notes that the sometimes rambling nature of Sarah Palin’s responses last night was due more to the lack of substance in the McCain campaign than Palin herself:
[O]ne of the more telling moments in the debate came when Palin, unbidden, latched on to a Biden reference to education, and started talking about all the teachers in her family, and how her kids attend public school, and then did her shout-out to her brother’s third grade class - all of which would have been an ideal anecdotal way to lead into a more substantive argument about education policy. The fact that Palin didn’t really have a substantive point (beyond vague references to paying teachers more and making NCLB more flexible) can be attributed in part to her lack of knowledge on the subject, no doubt, and perhaps to her lack of interest in policy detail - but it also reflects the fact that the McCain campaign hasn’t put any energy into developing a clear, consistent, and popular message on education.
(…)
[W]hen you don’t have much to say to the middle class on taxes, either, and when you haven’t figured out a way to address the liberal critique of your health care plan, and when you don’t want to talk about immigration at all (except out of the side of your mouth, to Hispanic groups), when you have next to nothing to say about crime or poverty or the country’s infrastructure or any other domestic issue except drilling and earmarks … well, it gets real tough out there real quick, no matter how many times you throw around the word “maverick.”
A more glib politician than Palin may have been able to gloss over this lack of substance with more finesse, but that wouldn’t have done anything about the fact that McCain’s campaign is glaringly lacking in substance right now.
And that, I think, explains why the public isn’t flocking to McCain.
