Palin, Biden clash as weak VP candidates

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Thursday's vice presidential debate between Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware is quite extraordinary: There probably has never been a vice presidential debate that has stirred so much public and media interest.

The debate is being held under the shadow of the greatest economic crisis in 75 years. Yet both candidates have been either silent or embarrassingly ill-informed about the fundamentals of the problems the nation faces.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has been subjected to withering media criticism for her alleged naivete. But Biden is at least as bad and with far less excuse.

Palin, after all, has been governor of Alaska for only two years and has performed extremely well in that role. Biden has been a sitting member of the U.S. Senate for 36 years -- one of the longest-serving members in the entire history of the institution. Yet so far he has remained completely at sea about the economic issues and what's at stake in the financial crisis.

Having said that, Biden will have by far the easier job in the debate. Democrats historically benefit from Wall Street meltdowns, and this time the conservative free-market Republicans are in their worst disarray since the Great Depression. If Biden can go attack dog on the issue, put Palin on the defensive and repeatedly embarrass her, he can win, and win big.

But Biden is also incapable of talking short and making a zinging response. Worse yet, he has been repeatedly prone to the most bizarre gaffes and elementary misstatements of fact. It is truly ludicrous for a man born in 1942, while Franklin D. Roosevelt was still president, to claim that FDR addressed the nation on television at the start of the Great Depression. The Depression started in 1929; FDR became president in 1933. The first television station in Biden's birth state of Pennsylvania did not start broadcasting until 1941.

The mainstream media has been as uncritical of Biden's truly alarming record of misstatements of fact and even memory as it has been of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's tongue-tied flubs whenever he is away from his teleprompter or any protected environment. Applying a continuing and unapologetic double standard, the mainstream television media and newspapers have been merciless toward Palin.

But Palin's greatest problems stem from her own handlers: Republican nominee Sen. John McCain and his strategists should have deployed Palin aggressively and confidently as an attack dog -- the way she so spectacularly succeeded in her standout acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

They should have teamed her with ace speechwriter Matthew Sculley, who drafted her speech at the convention with her and set up one major set piece after another for Palin to keep delivering punch lines. That also would have given her confidence and ease on the national scene to handle the debate.

Instead, the McCain team has wrapped Palin in cotton wool, dissipated her momentum, angered its conservative base, and fumbled its chance to let her woo the center, especially working-class female voters, with wit, charisma and popular appeal. Maybe the McCain team simply wants to lose the election.

The odds are therefore strongly on Biden's side. If Palin has been coached as defensively for the debate as she has been muzzled since the convention, Biden will dispatch her with ease. And the McCain camp already blew its strategy in the first presidential debate by going far too easy on Obama, allowing him to romp home in the polls.

But Biden, who has been nicknamed "Sen. Prolixity" for his love of long-winded and rambling answers to the simplest question, could still underestimate the Girl from the North Country. He has been told repeatedly he needs to treat her like a lady without becoming a wimp. And he is certainly prone to the same kind of long-winded rambling that sank Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, the doomed 1996 GOP vice presidential nominee, in his debate against incumbent Vice President Al Gore.

When Kemp was told he had 30 seconds to respond to a point, he said, "Thirty seconds, it takes me 30 seconds to clear my throat." The audience thought he was joking. He wasn't. Biden is all too likely to make a similar mess. And he has been notorious on the campaign trail for ignoring the tight guidelines and micromanagement that his Obama handlers have tried to impose on him.

There has been much sneering at Palin for coming from a state with such a tiny population. Ironically, Biden has gotten a free pass on the same issue. His Delaware is No. 45 in terms of population, with 865,000 people. Alaska is only marginally smaller in terms of population, ranking No. 47 with 683,500 people.

The harsh truth is that neither vice presidential nominee has indicated by their comments during the campaign so far that they have any real grasp of the fundamental economic crisis threatening the United States.

If elected, it is already clear that either of them will be the weakest and most ineffectual vice president in modern history. The McCain camp's hyper-defensive treatment of Palin and refusal to unleash her and the Obama camp's evident contempt for Biden should leave no doubt on that score.

But the debate still matters, and both candidates have the capabilities to either surprise and impress, or woefully blow it.

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(UPI Commentary by Martin Sieff)