The Hindu Business Line : The Palin-Biden debate

The number of people watching the TV debate on October 2 between the two Vice-Presidential candidates in the US election, the Governor of Alaska, Ms Sarah Palin, and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joe Biden, was 73 million. The only other debate in US history whose audience (81 million) surpassed this number was that between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Vice-Presidential debate this time generated far greater interest than ev en the first debate between the Presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama watched by around 50 million.

Magnetic personality

Indeed, people interested in public affairs, and especially the US presidential elections, in every part of the world were so highly keyed up that they could hardly wait to plant themselves before their TV sets. The credit, if it could be called that, for this worldwide excitement belongs solely to Ms Palin. A totally unknown figure till then, she was sprung on a surprised nation by Senator McCain as his Vice-Presidential choice, and she took the Republican Convention by storm with her magnetic personality and an electrifying speech that swept even hard-boiled convention-watchers and political commentators off their feet.

Subsequently, however, her small town upbringing in an offbeat State began to show. She came through so poorly in her one-on-one interviews with influential journalists and was found to be so lacking in grasp and gravitas that few could imagine her to possess the calibre necessary to assume the presidential mantle were something to happen to the 71-year old Senator McCain. Many columnists openly mooted the idea of her being replaced, and there was manifest uneasiness within the Republican fold itself.

The tremendous draw that the Vice-Presidential debate became was essentially on two counts. It was held in this backdrop when she was almost being written off as a liability, and people were bracing themselves to watch a disastrous ‘train wreck’ taking place right before their eyes. Second, Ms Palin was pitted against a savvy and nearly legendary political veteran, a six-time Senator (which means a continuous 36 years in the Senate), the chairman of one of the most important committees, and himself a presidential candidate on two previous occasions.

Different cup of tea

As I watched the debate, I could not but be deeply impressed by the high degree of self-possession and great sense of dignity with which both the participants conducted themselves. Ms Salin held her own before Senator Biden, enlivening her responses with her engagingly distinctive folksy manner and diction, giving away nothing of substance or consequence, and at no point looking like a dumb doll she was taken to be. True, she dodged a few inconvenient questions, taking off tangentially on topics she had prepared herself for.

With all this, does her performance mark herself out as a person of presidential timbre? I have my serious doubts. Yes, she is irresistibly charming, and, as Pakistan’s President, Mr Asif Ali Zardari gushed when led to her presence in New York, even gorgeous, but fitness for the office of the President of the mightiest, wealthiest and technologically most advanced nation in the world is an entirely different cup of tea.

Ms Palin herself, in her speech at the party convention, invoked that example of President Truman, to make the point that even a ‘Joe Six Pack’ (aam aadmi in Indian parlance) can make history. Yes he can, but in her case, somehow, even purging myself of any male chauvinism that may be in me, I frankly cannot bring myself to look upon her as a President or Commander-in-Chief nor reconcile myself to the thought of her being a heartbeat away from the presidency, if Senator McCain emerges the winner.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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