Member Questions

I felt Palin won. Biden didn't answer all the questions either, and many of the "good points" he appeared to make were lies, as I knew while watching but was proven by fact-checking by journalists within an hour after the debate.

I think Palin must have watched the Reagan debates / speeches as part of her prep. It may not go over well with some, but it does with many.

As for the "touching" moment when Biden fought back emotion - if Palin (or any woman) had had such a moment people would crucify her for it. Double standards reign.

Palin had very little time to prepare herself to speak to the American public on any of these matters. Biden has been running for President for decades, so this is old hat for him. Considering this, as many viewers did, Palin showed herself to be very intelligent and good at focusing on what's important. On the other hand, considering all I keep hearing about how wonderful Biden's foreign policy experience is, I was very unimpressed by the lack of substance in his answers. He should have blown her away, but he hardly scored any actual points in that area, when you remove the blatantly false statements that he made.

Overall, I think Biden did fine, but Palin reached her audience more effectively. If points were subtracted for substantive lies, Biden's score would have been much lower.

Biden won. I was so impressed. Palin did better than I though she would, and I am glad for her. Even though I don't agree with her ideas for this country, and think that she is grossly underqualified, I still didn't want her to look as bad as she did with Couric .... whether I like it or not, she is a female and represents her gender during these televised interviews and debates and so I don't want her to embarrass herself or the rest of us.

I thought it was an interesting debate. IMO, Sen. Biden won. I compare this to a job interview, those times when we are posed a difficult question and we try to answer it as best we can, even though we know our qualifications make us fall short. We have a tendency to repeat ourselves, we tend to try and add fluff to the answer, perhaps add a little charm to our delivery. But the bottom line is: the experience is not there. And I think that was the case with Gov. Palin. The frequent dropping of buzzwords like "maverick" and "hockey mom" and the like...to me, that doesn't give me confidence that this is someone who can be in the second highest executive position in the country. Another example: she made repeated promises to "get rid of corruption," but really didn't say how. In fact, in another one of her statements, she said "Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper." That was kind of worded simplistically, which in my view points to that feeling that she's not the right person for this highly important job. Another statement: "[In Alaska,] I had to take on those oil companies and tell them, 'No,' you know, any of the greed there that has been kind of instrumental, I guess, in their mode of operation, that wasn't going to happen in my state." She claimed that she's going to excel in issues of energy policy, but those kinds of statements don't convince me. I thought Biden made better arguments on plans of action and communicated more effectively and eloquently. - Paula.