Why We Must Overhaul "Support Our Troops"

This past week in America we celebrated Veterans Day. It is useful to recall what we were celebrating. Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day, which commemorated the ending of World War I, which took place on the 11th month, the 11th day and the 11th hour in 1918. This armistice marked the end of war, the day "the troops" became veterans. Unlike “Support the Troops,” Armistice Day celebrates demilitarization and peace.

In 1954, the Eisenhower administration renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day, to commemorate the veterans of all wars who have served our nation. The day became a reminder to the rest of the nation that even as our veterans' service has ended, our turn is up. Veterans Day is not Memorial Day, which is set aside to honor the dead, and there is much more work involved in honoring living veterans than in honoring the dead. Somewhere along the way we have confused the two.

Sadly, the living and the dead share one predicament: our nation honors their service with empty words. It is easy to chant “Support Our Troops,” as it is to sing praises of our fallen heroes; it is much harder to provide medical care for veterans. Praise and slogans are devices by which we can dispense with the obligation to look after those who have sacrificed so much for us. When we praise heroism, we celebrate a hero's sacrifice as a free gift to society that exacts no obligation on the part of the State to return the favor. It is not enough that we call our veterans’ service a sacrifice. Instead, we should reconceptualize their service as a contract by which our young men and women have offered to look out for us, and we in return have a correlative duty to take care of them when they return. Let us not just "Support our Troops," but instead Honor Our Veterans.

In our highly polarized politics, words that bring us together are rare to find. But sometimes in our search for unifying language, we end up only with propaganda, as is the case with “Support our Troops.” The slogan allows us to forget that before the troops were assembled, they were first civilians, and after the troops come home, they are veterans. We make rhetorical choices, and these choices have very real implications.

It has become commonplace in progressive punditry to highlight the difference between supporting the troops and supporting the war, but this distinction cannot be as sharply made as progressives would like. The reason is that "Support Our Troops” fixates our attention on our servicemen and women’s agency at the theater of war. After all, we can only "Support Our Troops" if they remain as troops. Keep them at war, because we can only support troops, not veterans; or so the slogans slyly insinuates. “Support Our Troops” focuses our attention on the here and now, not the fallout, the injuries, the adjustment that must happen later. To focus on "Supporting Our Troops" is to prioritize the needs of those who are fighting over those who have fought, focusing our attention on the war mission by personifying it in the men and women who fight it.

The call to "Support Our Troops" also implies a troop leader to whom our troops are subordinated, whose mission they must accomplish. A troop is a military unit (originally a small force of cavalry) subordinate to a squadron and headed by the troop leader, and cavalry soldiers of private rank are called troopers. So to "Support Our Troops" is to remember their position as soldiers at the bottom of the chain of command, not citizens of a democracy who happen also to hold the awesome power of electing their Commander-in-Chief. Why are we so quick to designate our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers as the Commander-in-Chief would designate them – as troops – and not as our fellow citizens to whom the State owes an obligation? No wonder when individual members of a phalange drop out of war because of injury, the “Support our Troops” slogan doesn’t seem to apply to them. Well, the slogan tells us exactly why: rhetorically and actually, our concern is to "Support Our Troops," not honor our veterans. Saying so has made it so.

We are not a medieval principality and our troops are not serfs to the king. Those who fight for us are citizens who made a compact to serve their country and not their king, they are not just troops committed to a mission determined by someone higher up the chain of command. We the People are at the top of the chain of command. The Commander-in-Chief owes his commission to the very people he commands – this is the paradox and majesty of our democracy. “Support Our Troops” elides this subtle fact by focusing our attention on troopers and their subordination to the troop leader. The slogan coagulates the multitude of servicemen and women into a single monolithic unit, a phalange of warriors ready to do the president’s bidding. “Support Our Troops” does not serve the country; it is propaganda that serves the Commander-in-Chief.

Needed: Soul-Searching in the GOP

Politics doesn't stop at the end of elections. Even before Senator Obama has been inaugurated, Republican politicians are regrouping on the ashes of the McCain campaign, hoping to rise pheonix-like for 2012. In particular, Governor Sarah Palin is getting more media attention than the president-elect - and that is an achievement. For a vice-presidential candidate carefully kept within closed doors, Sarah Palin sure is making the interview rounds this week. Her ambition is startling to behold; as palpable as her newfound respect for Hillary Clinton is strategic. "I would be happy to get to do whatever is asked of me to help progress this nation," said Palin at the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami on Wednesday. She left little doubt that she would like to be asked to head the GOP ticket in 2012, and if asked she would gladly oblige.

Sarah Palin is here to stay, but Republicans will do well to replace her with a Bobby Jindal or a Tim Pawlenty. Not that she is too - and we have heard this charge used before against Hillary Clinton - polarizing, but that she represents a repudiated ticket. The American people have delivered a stinging rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket, and this post-election Palinmania is nothing more than the last grumblings of a nostalgic conservative base wishfully thinking that an authentic conservative such as Palin could have won this year. This is stubborn and out-dated thinking, an unproductive "what-if" counterfactual that will only hinder the Republican party's ability to move on.

The GOP must do a soul-searching post-mortem of the elections, and then exorcize all that contributed to their losing streak in the last two years. Looking to the past will be no help to the party's future. Instead GOP leaders should look to Obamcans for clues for how to navigate our new political era: moderate Republicans such as Chuck Hagel, Ken Duberstein, Paul O'Neill, William Weld, Susan Eisenhower, and Colin Powell can help massage the Party back to the middle when Sarah Palin will only drag the party back to the deep end. When once liberals had to fight to win back the Reagan Democrats, now conservatives must fight to win back the Obamacans. Over is the Age of Reagan; this is the Age of Obama.

Good Morning and Good Night in America

Now that the elections are over, journalists are trying to drum up interest in the transition, the court intrigue of impending appointments, the personalities of the new DC aristocracy. But most citizens would have none of it. While the punditry will keep up its obsession, the American people, Rip Van Winkle will go back to sleep. And that is not a bad thing. This is our democracy, where citizens are free to go back to their business once they have picked their new president, who should now be free for the next four years to exercise his own judgment on their behalf. We will reassemble again soon enough to judge him, but until then, we wish him good luck and godspeed.

Throughout the late 90s, it became fashionable to decry the disengagement of citizens, the solipsism of citizens living politics vicariously via television and bowling alone. This year we saw that the American people can be awoken and roused to action. When in crisis and dire need, we have demonstrated our ability to rise to the occasion to care, to engage, and to vote. Most times our message is divided and diluted, but once every generation We the People speak with a stikingly clear voice, commanding and responding to a new leader's call for change. This is America, where a revolution can happen every generation, where our covenant with each other is reaffirmed and its meaning redefined.

If we are ever to end the permanent campaign - the pox on American politics - we should embrace and endorse this aspect of representative democracy that permits citizens to go back to their own private affairs and allows our officials to conduct the nation's business. Ours is not a direct democracy in which citizens are asked to approve and to bless every governmental decision to be made; ours is a representative democacy in which the people choose to defer their opinions to the judgment of their elected representatives. This is the paradoxical luxury enjoyed by a democratic people who remain sovereign even as they are governed.

What President-elect Obama should read

From Inside Higher Ed

The president-elect should read Preparing to be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt (AEI Press, 2000), edited by Charles O. Jones. Richard Neustadt was a scholar-practitioner who advised Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton, and, until his passing in 2003, also the dean of presidential studies. Most of the memos in this volume were written for president-elect John Kennedy, when the country was, as it is now, ready for change.

At the end of every election, “everywhere there is a sense of a page turning ... and with it, irresistibly, there comes the sense, ‘they’ couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t, but ‘we’ will,” Neustadt wrote years ago, reminding presidents-elect that it is difficult but imperative that they put the brake on a campaign while also starting the engine of a new administration. Campaigning and governing are two different things.

Buoyed by their recent victory, first-term presidents have often over-reached and under-performed, quickly turning hope into despair. If there is one common thread to Neustadt’s memos, it is the reminder that there is no time for hubris or celebration. The entire superstructure of the executive branch — the political appointees who direct the permanent civil service — is about to lopped off, and the first and most critical task of the president-elect is to surround himself with competent men and women he can work with and learn from.

In less than three months, the president-elect will no longer have the luxury of merely making promises on the campaign trail. Now he must get to work.

The Arc of a Pendulum

Not all elections were created equal.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson took his newly formed Jeffersonian-Republican party to victory on an anti-Federalist platform, arguing convincingly that George Washington and John Adams (with the Alien and Sedition Acts) had over-centralized power in the federal government.

In 1828, Andrew Jackson stood against the National Bank and federal funds for internal improvements in his contest with John Quincy Adams. The election inaugurated Jacksonian democracy and an anti-Jacksonian Whig/Republican party that would, together, create the oldest surviving two-party system in the history of the world.

The central question at the ballot box in 1860 was not slavery, but the states' rights to secede in order to preserve the peculiar institution. This election was the purest expression of the Federalist and anti-Federalist debate of the Founding generation and it would establish the Republican party as the dominant party in American politics for decades to come.

In 1896, Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan told his fellow democrats as well as members of the Populist party that he would not allow the industrial north and the coasts to force the gold standard on silver supporters, mostly farmers in the agricultural south and midwest. McKinley relied heavily on finance, railroads, and industry for his support and cemented the Republicans as the party of business.

The era of hands-off goverment came to an end in 1932, when FDR would offer a new deal for the American people, promising the helping hand of government when before the people waited for the invisible hand of the economy.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan declared that government was not the solution to our problems but the problem itslf. The era of big government and of the welfare queen was over, as was the New Deal coalition.

Each of these elections heralded the first ("Revolution of 1800"), second (Jacksonian Democracy), third (Civil War), fourth ("System of 1896"), fifth ("New Deal"), and sixth (Reagan Revolution) party systems in American history. They were characterized by relatively high voter participation or turnout and an enduring switch in partisan loyalties. The issues may have changed, but the central axis of debate has always been the same in each of these critical elections: what is the proper and constitutional role of the federal government? The is a question as old as our constitution, and one that triggers an electoral revolution every 3 decades or so. In the grand sweep of history, there are no winners and no losers, just the arc of a pendulum.

This year, John McCain has campaigned on a message of cleaning up the corruption and pork-barrel spending in Washington and Barack Obama has campaigned on the promise of what citizens can do for their country and what government can do in return for them. Obama has chastized McCain for saying that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" while McCain has condemned Obama for trying to "spread the wealth." More than any election since 1980, this is, once again, an election about whether government is the solution to our problems or the problem itself. "Yes, we can" implies "No, we haven't yet." If Barack Obama wins on Tuesday, the Democratic majority in all branches of government will likely chant, "now, we will."

Can We Trust the Polls?

Which polls do we believe in when there is so much variance in the results? The polls are volatile now because we really don't have a good metric for assessing the elusive category pollsters call "likely voters," a category especially difficult to define in a year with so many new voter registrations are from demographics - youth (71%) and blacks (25%) - who have not typically turned out to vote in significant numbers.

As think-thanks and universities seeking a public profile are jumping on the polling bandwagon, as are new PR companies and media outlets with their own agendas, we are better off over-weighting the results from the gold-standard of the polling establishment, Gallup.

In only one time in the history of polling has a candidate won the election after trailing in the Gallup poll in the week before election. The candidate was Ronald Reagan. The reason why Reagan soared in the final week of October in 1980 was because of his strong debate performance. Without a similar event occuring in 2008, a reversal and repudiation of the polls would be unprecedented and improbable.

Forecasting science is more science than art or ideology. If politicians didn't believe in polls they wouldn't be commissioning them. It is the job of pundits to spin the interpretation of polls, as it is the job of partisans to manipulate the nature of the sample size. But if done well, polls can tell us rather precisely what we think. And since 1/3 of the electorate will vote before Nov 4, these polls are indicating how early voters are voting.

The State of the Presidential Race

1. A new WSJ poll shows Obama up by 10 points. Tucked away on p. 26 (Question 28a) of this report is a significant finding: when asked which two factors most bothered poll respondents about John McCain's candidacy, 34% thought that "his vice presidential running mate is not qualified to be president" and 23% thought that "he would continue George W. Bush's policies." Unbelievably, Palin has turned out to be a heavier mill stone on McCain's neck than George Bush. If Palin Effect > Bradley Effect, McCain shall be hoisted by his own petard.

(Palin is also a comedian's Nirvana. When asked by a third-grader today what the role of the VP was, she said: "They're in charge of the United States Senate." Priceless.)

2. CO + VA = FL or OH

It has come to that. A luxurious electoral map with many avenues to 270 for Obama, and a shrinking map for McCain. It has been a long time that a Democrat candidate has dared comtemplate electoral victory without FL or OH. Even as Obama is slightly ahead in both states, it now appears that he does not need them.

McCain on the other hand is trying to persuade Plumber Joes in PA to stick with him. Things are so dire that McCain is fighting for his political life in a must-win "battleground" state that has Obama up 11 points.

McCain is too focussed on a Karl Rovian state-by-state strategy. Granted the way to the White House is through the electoral college, but this conventional wisdom is really only relevant in close races such as in 2000 and 2004. McCain needs to narrow the national poll numbers so that he can regain competitive status in a a number of states (WV, MN, MT and ND - all of which have Obama up by at least 5 points now). That means move away from the pander-to-Plumber-Joe strategy. McCain is being blind-sighted by a piecemeal state-by-state strategy when Obama has wisely played (and been fortunate enough to be able to play) a 50 state strategy and a national message. Focused on the tree, McCain has lost sight of the forest.

3. If this will turn out to be a landslide electon (at least in terms of the electoral college), it will emerge because of the incredible voter registration effort and the ground turn-out operation of the Obama campaign. In the caucus states, in the West, and in the South, Team Obama is welcoming millions of people into political action. This is how he has established leads in places like NM, CO, and VA - not merely by changing the minds of existing voters, but the big gains are really coming from drawing unregistered or disaffected voters back into the public sphere.

For years scholars have debated the relative importance of high turnout and a maximally participatory democracy, with Bruce Ackerman at Yale arguing that low turnout during routine years are OK, as long as "We the People" turn out in huge numbers in critical moments in American history to fulfill their civic duty and to redefine the direction of national politics. 2008 may be one such year.

(Obama's lead is in the 18-34 age group, where he is outpolling McCain by over 30 points. None of these people were alive during the Vietnam war, when McCain earned his credentials as a patriotic war veteran. The Democratic party, in picking Obama over Clinton, representing the old Democratic parry, has registered its desire to move on from the debilitating debates over Vietnam, race, and labor relations. That is why McCain's war record isn't affecting Obama's lead, it is why the Ayers connection as well as the socialism charge have remained politically stillborn. These are old attacks tangential to the new direction of liberalism in our time.)

Tragically, McCain's best chance of turning all this around is to focus on voter supression.

4. There is also a darker tale to be told if Obama wins. The truth is much that is going on now would not have been possible without the formidable coffers of the Obama campaign and the emerging techniques of fundraising via the internet. If picking Palin was McCain's biggest mis-step this campaign season, watch out for an emerging conventional wisdom in a few weeks that a future presidential candidate who does not opt out of public financing will do so at his/her own peril.

The Rehabilitation of Liberalism

Whatever happens at the polls in two weeks, the pendulum has swung back in Liberalism's direction. Economically, culturally, and ideologically, liberal answers are regaining legitimacy.

After all, even though the Democratic party nominated a liberal anti-war candidate over a more moderate establishment canditate this year, and the Republicans turned to a maverick with a reputation for bi-partisanship, the Democratic candidate is ahead in practically every battleground state that George Bush won in 2004.

How quickly times have changed. Whereas John Kerry was swiftboated in 2004, Obama (like Reagan) is developing Teflon powers as he continues to ride his surge in the polls despite stories about Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and ACORN. When terrorism was issue number one, people preferred a Republican president; but when the economy becomes issue number one, people prefer a Democratic president.

This is why Sarah Palin's charge that "'spreading the wealth' sounds a little like socialism" isn't getting much traction. Spreading the wealth sounds like sharing the wealth, and these days such thoughts aren't all that unpopular. After all, the Bush administration's decision to obtain equity stakes in several private banks in return for a liquidity injection isn't exactly laissez faire.

Culturally, the country appears to have moved on from those culture wars we heard so much about just four years ago. Just this year, the California and Connecticut Supreme Courts' decisions to legalize same-sex marriage and the lackluster response from the conservative community indicates the shifting cultural tectonics. Abortion isn't such a hot button issue this year either. Anti-abortion Catholics have endorsed Obama in significant numbers. If anything, McCain's selection of a running mate who will not make an exception to her pro-life position for rape and incest reveals a campaign completely in illusion about where the country is culturally. McCain's contempy for the "health" exception for women will seriously damage his chances with women. (What is the point of picking Sarah Palin to try to attract Hillary Clinton's supporters only to repel them thricefold with a dismissive remark like that?)

We also see the ideological shift in cross-party endorsements for Obama. Breaking a century and a half year old tradition, the Chicago Tribune has endorsed Barack Obama. Christopher Buckley's defection is both substantially and symbolically powerful, as were the endorsements of Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar. And now Colin Powell has joined the bandwagon, characterizing Obama as a "transformational" leader. The last time we saw such language being used to describe a potential president was during the landslide and realigning elections of 1932 and 1980.

In the following days to come, Republicans will push back to insist that this is still a "center-right" country - as Karl Rove and Charles Krauthhammer have done - and they will try to remind Americans that Democratic control of all branches of government may not be a good idea. But if the result of the White House race is still unclear, no one doubts that the Democrats will strengthen their majorities in both the House and the Senate. Average Joe, the median independent voter has moved to the Left of Plumber Joe, the median Republican voter. It may be time to excavate "liberal" and "liberalism" from the dictionary of political incorrectness.

The Third Debate

John McCain was at his best this third debate. He was fighting tooth and nail to change the game, and so the base loved it. But Obama's momentum is so strong now that pundits are losing their objectivity, and unwilling to concede that Obama really wasn't all that spectacular in this debate. He didn't slip up, but I'm not sure that his performance merited the 20 point victory that polls are assigning him. For better or worse, democracy and public opinion polls institutionalize herd-mentality. The stampede is headed Left.

Joe the Plumber was at the heart of his debate. Not Average Joe, mind you, but Plumber Joe; registered Republican white male voter living in Ohio. Yes, the precise demographic the McCain campaign is scrambling to retain as the Obama machine wages war all over the electoral map. Not content with a ten point lead in Virginia - a state that has not gone Democratic since 1964 - and a tie in North Carolina, now there is talk of the Obama campaign moving resources into West Virginia and back to Georgia. This is a relentless, aggressive, war machine looking not for a victory, but a routing. Forced to defend his base at every turn, Senator McCain has scarcely spent any time addressing or courting independents this election season. Cornered and embattled, the McCain campaign has not many ways left to 270. His fate is akin to threading a needle, as Karl Rove put it in the Wall Street Journal.

Contingency may well be all McCain can hope for now. The fundamentals are in place - an unpopular Republican president, an unpopular war, and an economic crisis - a toxic trifecta that even Karl Rove, Mark Hanna, and Martin Van Buren ("the magician") combined cannot make disappear.

What McCain is Doing Wrong

This is a Democratic year, so an argument can be made that because John McCain is fortune's knave, he just has no chance this year.

But he's definitely not helping his cause. This is a time when Americans are looking at the plunging Dow Jones, their pocket books and their 401k accounts, and the McCain campaign is talking about Bill Ayers? This is suicide for the campaign, and when all is said and done, the Republican party will have to do some soul-searching about the role and influence of the culturally and obstinately conservative base in the party who have slung a millstone (together with Sarah Palin) around McCain's neck.

Playing to the base worked in 2004 when the culture wars were still alive. Ronald Inglehart showed us a long time ago that post-materialism is a privilege only for those who are not preoccupied with pocket book matters. But this is no time to worry about the rights of the unborn or the rights of the married - Sarah Palin's new tack. This is not even time to worry about Obama's alleged ties to a terrorist (amazingly, because four years ago this would have had maximal traction on an already swiftboated candidate).

Even though the country has unequivocably moved on (to other fears), at every point in this campaign, McCain has played to the culturally conservative base of the Republican party as if we were still in 2000 or 2004 - his performance at the Saddleback Faith Forum, his choice of Sarah Palin, his attacks on Obama's associations with Bill Ayers reveal a candidate petulantly locked in a different era. It is as if he has taken a principled stand not to run ahead of the political curve. This is foolish nostalgia, evidence of an ailing ideological empire refusing to innovate.

Why is McCain turning to the old tricks even as they are no longer effective? Perhaps there is a general (and historically repetitive) puzzle here to unpack: why do politicians turn to bankrupt strategies - there you go again, as Reagan so powerfully put it to Jimmy Carter in 1980 - even when these tactics have aged well past their prime? Because for better or for worse, every democratic politician is bound to an ideology that was once powerful and dominant enough to carry him/her into power but bound also to the fact that even the greatest ideology, like the greatest empire, must obey the law of gravity. Crying wolf usually works particularly well the first couple of times - indeed it creates a habit because it is initially rewarded with positive feedback. So politicians (and their political descendants) will keep crying wolf again and again, right up to and past the point of diminishing returns. A new wolf cry heralds a new era - change, we usually call it - and the cycle starts all over again. There is one constant however: what goes up must come down.

John McCain will do well to remember that the only reason why he emerged victorious in his party's primary contests was because his party calculated that the maverick from the senate was best positioned to cry a different tune in this election other than wolf. Only a maverick can postpone the law of gravity, but maverick McCain has not been. Paradoxically, just when the Republican party really needed a maverick, John McCain is faithfully towing the party line. All he has done so far has been to chant the same tune - we want victory in Iraq, no negotiation with terrorists, we want to lower taxes, we want to control spending, Obama is "that one." There you go again, Senator McCain. Stop crying wolf or you could be crying on November 4.

John McCain needs to be a New Republican, a real maverick if he is to have any chance at all of winning this election. He should think Eisenhower and (yes even) Nixon. Anything but Reagan and Bush.

The Second Presidential Debate

Town halls meetings under the watchful eye of a moderator are great for one thing - they demand a little bit more substance from candidates than normal because they have been warned before hand that they will not be rewarded by applause but (enforced) silence. So there were a whole lot more frowns than there were any hoots in tonight's debate. Because both candidates were being closely watched, there were relatively less attacks, and more I-feel-your-pains. Both still pandered - neither would admit that the economy was in for it for a while before it would get better.

While Obama moved around less and looked straight into the eye of the questioner more often and for longer, McCain circled and wandered around the audience. Worse still, he seemed to lose his cool when Obama asked for follow-up time, and McCain protested only to testily quip "fine by me, fine by me." He needs to stop using "my friends" at every turn, because he does not pull it off the way Reagan would have or George W Bush does. Instead, McCain often sounded inauthentic and uneasy, even presumptuous. Obama on the other hand was warm, quick on his feet, and was particularly good when pivoting on the final question about what didn't he know to talk about uncertainty and leadership.

This was a must-win night for McCain, but he failed to deliver a breakthrough. He did have a new plan for the Secretary of Treasury to buy out bad mortgages, but it's unlikely to move minds now that the broad thrust of his economic policies are well known. Even Frank Luntz over at Foxnews found that more participants responded to Obama than to McCain, as did Soledad O'Brien over at CNN.

I don't necessarily think that Obama did that much better than McCain. The fact that elite opinions are starting to line up in forecasting an Obama victory suggest a momentum that is now indisputably in full swing. For better or for worse, democracy must live with the fundamentals of mass psychology - everyone wants to be on the winning team and herd mentality reinforces belief systems. Maybe there'll be an October surprise, but I suspect that the current economic crisis constitutes an October tragedy that far overshadows any possible surprise. The Obama campaign will love tomorrow's headlines.

Sarah Palin Will Not Debate

Obama supporters were surprised that Sarah Palin didn't trip up in her debate with Joe Biden; but they nevertheless thought that she was incoherent through most of it. Palin's supporters were thrilled that she came back after multiple setbacks with her interviews with Katie Couric with a slamdunk. We have become so divided as a nation that we can't even agree on which is night and which is day.

The reason, I think, is because Sarah Palin did not answer Gwen Ifill's questions. When a student refuses to take a test, we cannot meaningfully compare her performance with another.

Right at the outset of the debate, Palin announced her contempt for the debate format: "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also." Palin's opponents cried foul, but her suppporters applauded her contempt of the media and Washington's rules.

Here was Gwen Ifill's first question: "The House of Representatives this week passed a bill, a big bailout bill ... was this the worst of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?"

This was Palin's first non-answer: "You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America's economy, is go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, "How are you feeling about the economy?"

Biden did a classic debate pivot, but he did try to answer the question, saying "I think it's neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had."

Consider Ifil's third question: "Governor, please if you want to respond to what he (Biden) said about Sen. McCain's comments about health care?" and Palin's putulant non-reply "I would like to respond about the tax increases."

Or Ifill's seventh question: "What promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you're not going to be able to keep?" Sarah Palin tried her hand at the pivot trick too: "I want to go back to the energy plan, though, because this is -- this is an important one that Barack Obama, he voted for in '05." By pivot I mean, tangent.

In her closing statement, Palin again made clear where her priorities were. "I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they've just heard. I'd rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did." Speak to the American people she did, but answer these tough questions she did not.

We should stop pretending that debates really happen in American politics; even the four organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates no longer qualify. Masquerading for debate, all we get are solipsistic televised addresses delivered to us in alternating segments. Last Thursday, Gwen Ifill was little more than a two-minute time keeper with no control of how Biden and especially Palin used their time.

Let us remember why we care for debates. Because meaningful exchanges between alternative voices stand at the heart of democracy. By controlling for question, we can see how candidates measure up to each other substantively. Instead, American politics today is deluged by speeches and not debates, assymetric communications in which politicians talk past each other rather than to each other.

Avoiding the questions and eschewing a debate may be good for a candidate but it is bad for democracy. And we should not allow Sarah Palin or any other candidate to tell us that democracy is only about connecting with people and not also debating the issues. Only demagogues insist on trading directly with the people without the watchful eye - Palin calls it the "filter" - of the media or a dissenting interlocutor. Democracy is best served by reciprocity and deliberation, not one-sided assertions to one's base with no follow-up questions.

While Palin connected last Thursday, she hardly debated. As supporter Michelle Malkin revealingly put it: "She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message." Seven ayes for style, an aye for substance, and nay to debate. The nays have it.

Palin Stops the Haemorrhage with her Winks

Sarah Palin succeeded tonight in stemming the haemorrhage she's caused her ticket. She was likeable. Very likeable, according to most conservatives who are heaving a collective sigh of relief. Tentative at first, one could almost hear her thoughts cranking up in each answering sequence when the prepared lines came back to her. At the crest of her thoughts, she was on message. (Though her debate coach apparently didn't care to correct her pronunciation of nu-cu-ler - but then neither did Bush's.) Dick Morris, Karl Rove, and Sean Hannity think Palin delivered a "shock and awe." Liberals will disagree, but they should remember that the meaning of eloquence is defined in partisan terms. (Explain the difference and you should win the nobel prize in American politics.)

Palin's relative success was to be expected to the extent that she didn't have to deal with follow up questions that would force her to deal with specifics, and she was free not to answer the questions Gwen Ifill posed; indeed she was free to stray. It is enough these days to deliver the punchlines, nevermind how you argued yourself there. That said, while Sarah Palin's winks may have trumped Biden's words for her supporters, there are significantly more Americans today who are looking for executive competence than (as was the case in 2000 and 2004) executive congeniality.

Biden was in attack mode tonight. He was probably told that he best direct his fire to McCain, not to the lady standing beside him. So in his restraint, Palin was afforded the space to deliver her homey punchlines. She tried the "there you go ahead line" (dwelling on the past) when Biden attacked Bush, but that didn't go very far because as Biden cleverly put it in reply, the past eight years is prologue.

Was this a game changer? Depends on who you ask, and where they set the goalposts. About 85 % of FOX viewers thought Palin won and about 65% of CNN viewers thought Biden won - surprise, surprise. Republicans sincerely believe it was a game changer, because the bleeding has stopped. Democrats don't think that Palin did anything to hurt Obama, so this debate won't bring a point of inflection. Both sides are right. (But I'll look at whether the now Obama-leaning states that Palin had once yanked away from the Democrats such as MI return to toss-up status in the next few days to see who was more right.) What we can safely say is that with the potential toxin on the McCain ticket now neutralized - because the calls for Palin to bow out from Republican ranks will now cease - the VPs will now recede to the background as they have for almost every other election cycle, as Obama and McCain will return to the foreground. Next stop, Nashville, TN. But let it be said that the concrete is quickly setting on the extant poll numbers.

VP Debate Stakes

Sarah Palin is in serious danger of Dan Qualying herself. She doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is, she can't explain why her experience as Governor gives her foreign policy credentials other than Alaska's proximity to Russia, and now, we find out that she cannot name another Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with. Let's stretch ourselves well past the boundary of the benefit of the doubt and assume that Sarah Palin knows the answers, she's just not quick enough to deliver them on a moment's notice - yet I'm not sure whether it is an exoneration or an indictment of her that the only excuse for Palin's ignorance is her dullness.

Whichever it is, even conservatives have publicly questioned the wisdom of the Palin pick. As Charles Krauthammer wrote, "The vice president's only constitutional duty of any significance is to become president at a moment's notice. Palin is not ready. Nor is Obama. But with Palin, the case against Obama evaporates." McCain's repeated attack that Obama "just doesn't understand" in their first debate did not and could not work because it was an argument standing on stilts compared to his vice-presidential nominee.

If there is anything more dangerous in American politics than an intelligent anti-intellectual who insidiously stokes public opinion with the dark arts of demagoguery, it is an ignorant anti-intellectual who inadvertently energizes her base because of her seemingly unreflected positions on core conservative positions. If Palin doesn't resurrect her reputation in tomorrow's debate, McCain will pay dearly for what is increasingly being perceived to be his spectacular lack of judgement in picking her. For as things stand, Palin appears to be little more than a demographic place-mat for potential women and conservative voters, and a shrinking one at that. Hillary Clinton supporters are in asking in agony - THIS is the woman representing us as one of the four candidates fighting for occupancy in the White House? If Hillary Clinton put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, Sarah Palin seems intent on welding it back to its originally pristine condition.

If Palin is not to remain the butt of every late night comedian's joke, then she must establish herself as a legitimate national political figure tomorrow night. She's surely going to be likeable, but will she be respected and can she resuscitate her professional reputation? Liberal women should take heed when they mock Palin - justified as they may be - for it says something about our society that it is enough for men like George Bush to be likeable and get elected, but congeniality, at this moment, might not be enough for Palin. The anti-intellectual strategy is a gendered strategy with assymetric payoffs to women and to men.

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