Dick Cheney Wanted to Work With Special Needs Kids Too, But the Kids Said No

By ordinary standards, Joe Biden "won" the debate. He was more articulate, seemed more conversant with the facts, made more of an effort to answer the questions. But Sarah Palin's performance was so weird that I don't know how to judge it. She just wasn't playing the same game as her opponent.

The Alaskan dived deep into the Avatar Of The Everyday American role, not just with cloying, self-conscious allusions to "Joe Six-Pack" and "hockey moms" and soccer sidelines and so on, but by stammering through her answers like she'd won an Anyone Can Debate Joe Biden contest. Maybe there's a method to this madness. Maybe she was authentic enough to impress a lot of viewers as Someone Like Me, evasive and incoherent enough to lure Democrats into attacks that might be seen as mocking People Like You.

Or maybe she just came off as an ill-informed panderer. Who knows? I appreciated the debate as Dada, at any rate, especially that bizarre exchange about the vice president's powers.

Apropos of nothing, or everything: