More Post-Debate Analysis

You know, when you take the political framing off of last night and don't think about how she played to the Republicans' Christianist base, it's hard to escape the fact that Palin is just clearly out of her depth as a veep candidate. I don't care too much about experience, frankly, but she has shown in past five weeks an utter lack of interest in any of the subjects she ought to be at least somewhat fluent in. Last night merely reinforced that impression—but then, reading note cards would do little to dispel it.

Given the major problems facing this country right now, she is just too unserious a candidate for a position that's too important. It's become increasingly cledar that McCain's choosing her was a sign of desperation, showing his own lack of seriousness as a candidate—not to mention his contempt for anyone with a higher than 8th grade education.

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And I'm still beating the drum about how impotent Ifill was as a moderator. She allowed herself to be worked by the Repubs (as in working the refs) and it showed. 

Thankfully, others with a much larger audience have the same take. Here is Sullivan's:

Were the candidates allowed to bring scripts in with them? And was Ifill told not to ask open-ended questions. Most of her questions helpfully contained within them all the facts necessary to answer them. [This bothered me too, though no on e else seemed to notice.] The intimidation of Ifill worked: she was clearly desperate not to be accused of asking anything that caould be called "gotcha". She was useless in actually prying information out of the candidates, which is to say useless at doing her job.

Exactly.