WASHINGTON: Sarah Palin, now the Republican vice presidential candidate, brought something more effective than facts and figures to an agriculture debate in the Alaska governor’s race two years ago. She packed an engaging disposition.
One of her opponents, Andrew Halcro, had memorized the complexities of the subject beforehand. He was super prepared. He might as well have stared out the window during the proceedings, for all it mattered.
“She did such a great job with just the glittering generalities and filling the room with her presence that people didn’t care what she said about agriculture,” Halcro says now of Palin, who went on to win governor’s office. “Palin’s a master at spending 45 seconds telling you what color the sky is,” he adds, “and people will say, That’s the greatest thing I ever heard.” Palin and her Democratic vice presidential rival, Joe Biden, each bring distinctive qualities and vulnerabilities to the campaign’s only running-mate debate, Thursday in St. Louis. It’s a potential gold mine and minefield for both. Biden is a loquacious man of charm and detail with an agile yet unpredictable mind. He can bring the house down with a quip. Two decades ago, he brought his first presidential campaign down with a colossal faux pas in a debate at the Iowa State Fair.
The Delaware senator’s debating experience stretches back to 1972 when, as Palin has noted, she was in second grade.
The first-term Alaska governor, however, is no newcomer to political debating, even if she’s new to the national big leagues. In 2006, she powered through some two dozen debates, first against an incumbent governor from her own party, then against a former governor from the other side, plus other rivals.
Then as now, she was disparaged as something of a small-town lightweight — one of the “so-called opponents,” in the dismissive words of Frank Murkowski, the Republican governor she would unseat.
Then, she held her own or better in the crush of debates, upending Alaska’s political establishment in the process with a one-two punch in the primaries and fall election.
