Debate Afterthoughts: Palin, Ifill, More Palin

1)Those of you who predicted that Sarah Palin's stumbles in the week leading up to last night's debate would set her up for a victory of sorts were exactly right. The dominant media meme this morning has Palin getting out of the debate hall unscathed, and maybe even having made up some lost ground. "G.O.P. Ticket Survives a Test" was the New York Times analysis; "Palin meets expectations but still falls short" was Politico's take. Not a bad outcome for Palin considering at least one snap poll had her losing the debate in the eyes of viewers.

2)For all the yelling beforehand about Gwen Ifill's conflict of interest, can anyone point to even one instance last night where she was unfair to Palin? Sure, I said her book about "The Age of Obama" necessitated some kind of disclosure, and PBS's ombudsman agrees that Ifill should've raised the subject earlier, but in the event she was the picture of even-handedness. "I'd defy the critics to show how Ifill's questions even came close to favoring one nominee over the other," says Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey.

If anything, Ifill was ever so slightly harder on Biden: In her question about each candidate's "Achilles heel," she set Palin's inexperience against Biden's supposed lack of discipline. Inexperience is a temporary condition; indiscipline is a character flaw. Ouch.

3)After watching Palin's performance, I'm even more convinced than I was last week that her curious speaking style has its roots in TV news, and possibly in her own background as a broadcaster. The tilts of the head, the face-scrunching, the winks, the sudden fluctuations in vocal timbre that don't seem to bear any relationship to the content of what she's saying -- they're all very local newscaster.

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