Will People Remember Palin?

Will people remember Sarah Palin in 2012?

The GOPVP candidate and Alaska governor is positioned to make a run for president then, or so goes the rumor, but a brief CNN story this morning asked people who was John Kerry's vice presidential running mate in 2004.

Three people they asked, three people whiffed it.



Now I know how TV works -- more may have gotten it right but didn't make it past the editing booth. TV is more about compelling video than actual news. But let's give CNN the benefit of the doubt and look at this incredibly minuscule survey of three people as somehow educational and informative (stay with me, I know it's a stretch, but stay with me). Edwards was the running mate, obviously, and he even hit the news again recently when an affair became public knowledge. So you'd think he would be memorable, what with that perfect hair and screwing around on his wife and all that.

So again I wonder, will people remember Palin?

My answer: Yep, you betcha!

She's no John Edwards. She'll remain a media darling, she still has public office, and although there will be a stretch there where she kinda disappears from the radar she will re-emerge and play a role in the 2012 campaign. But I don't see her as the nominee. Political parties tend to move on, and there are a few good candidates waiting for their chance for the GOP, like the governor from Louisiana.

My interest here, obviously, is on what people know. So that small, insignificant, completely unscientific poll this morning on TV tells me something -- that people quickly forget. Palin will have to fight that, maybe by being Alaska's U.S. senator, maybe by doing something radical in Alaska, maybe by starting a talk show or appearing in a film. But we forget those VP types quickly, even the quirky ones, so to stay in the public mind she'll have to work at it.

Can she do it? You betcha.

The VP Debate

First, the who won. A CBS poll of uncommitted voters gave Joe Biden the edge, 42-21 percent, over Sarah Palin. A CNN poll of regular voters looks about the same, 51-36 percent thinking Biden won. And he did, by any objective, non-partisan analysis.

In Palin's favor, no stumbles other than a creepy wink thing (see video below). Eighty-four percent said the Alaska governor did better than they expected. Something, then, for everyone. I thought at times she shined, at times she repeated the mantra. To stand toe-to-toe with an experienced guy like Biden, not bad.


And though I bitched a little (see below) about the moderator Ifill and her book, 95 percent polled thought she was fair. And she was.

The Fox folks this morning insisted Palin won. I think they watched their TVs with the sound off.

What We Know, about VPs

Joe Biden and Sarah Palin do the VPFaceoff at 9 p.m. EST on various TV channels. You know the mantra: Biden's gotta be careful not to be condescending, Palin's gotta look smarter than she appeared on earlier interviews, the moderator is writing a book with a chapter on Obama, so she's suspect.

A word on the Gwen Ifill book on blacks in politics thing. The PBSer should have told the debate commission she was writing the book -- any reasonable journalist would instantly recognize this as a potential problem and bow out, but I guess it's something you can't pass up. Stupid stupid TV people, hungry for one more minute in front of the camera. Sheesh. Not that I think the book is a real conflict or she can't rise above it, but something they never seem to get is the appearance of conflict. That's all that's needed out there in the weird wild blogosphere.

Stupid stupid TV people.

So what we know about Sarah Palin, in particular, will be formed in the American mind tonight. For her supporters, they hope she keeps it simple, earthy, and doesn't ramble incoherently. I'm guessing she'll do fine.

Plus, the VP debate rarely matters. Even Dan Quayle getting ripped in his 1988 VP debate couldn't sink Bush Sr.'s presidential run, so if Palin stumbles I don't think it'll matter all that much. Obama has the momentum, so to me the pressure is on Biden not to screw that up, but even if he does I don't think it'll matter.

Let's face it. We're watching for the theater of the moment. Waiting for the crash.

Knowing Sarah

The Pew Center folks asked an interesting survey question:

Apart from the WAY news organizations are reporting the story, do you think it is important that voters learn about the details of Sarah Palin's background in order to judge whether she would be a good vice president, or do you think the details of her background are not related to her ability to serve as vice president?

This gets at people's self-judgments as to whether they know enough, and whether it's important for them to know more about the GOPVP nominee's background. In other words, does her background matter?

A lot of people, 70 percent, said it is important to know these kind of details. Twenty-seven percent said it's not important. Three percent of respondents didn't have a clue. As an aside, there's almost an even split on whether people think news orgs have been fair to Palin, no doubt broken down nicely by partisan/ideological lines.

The full report, which is here, includes a fascinating comparison with Dan Quayle from 1988. More people in 2008 (70 percent) think it's important to know this stuff than back then (56 percent). I'm not sure what this means and the report doesn't break the numbers down into categories, but more people thought coverage of Quayle was unfair than of Palin today. This may represent the partisan breakdowns of the time, or that Quayle was at least a U.S. senator and had some experience at the national level. Or maybe it had to do with spelling potato. Impossible to say.

These will be fun data to play with some day, a comparison of the two Veep nominees.

Joe Who?

Fifty-three percent of Democrats don't have enough of an opinion about VPstakes winner Joe Biden to have an opinion about the long-serving U.S. senator, according to one poll. Another poll of Americans has 23 percent who say they've never heard of him and another 28 percent don't have an opinion.

Joe Who?

Obviously anyone who has watched politics and policy closely know who Biden is, and to be honest it's not even Labor Day yet, so a huge chunk of Americans have other things to worry about -- like the cost of gas or kids starting school. Joe Who? is a perfectly reasonable response by many.

McCain's up next. Mitt Who?