Doncha think Team Obama actually saw those tapes before showed up on your radar...?

do you think Miss Wasilla is as brilliant and as disciplined as say, Judy Holliday to be able to play that dumb without breaking character?

(although this posting was kinda dumb). Who the hell would publicly humiliate themselves multiple times in front of the whole country just so they look better in the debate?!

You said it yourself: "The problem, of course, is that if that is the plan, she's succeeded beyond the McCain campaign's wildest dreams".

So she has NOT been acting 'dumb like a fox'. This is not to say that she won't do well tonight, just sayin' she didn't purposely try to look dumb in her interviews.

Nope, she's a dope. She's just too dumb to play dumb. And if you look closely at her previous debates, there's no substance. It's all fluff and no stuff. Personally, I think she suffers from stage fright. She gets that deer caught in the headlights look and just glazes over and forgets all her lines. The only cure for that is to go back to Alaska for a lot more "regional" theater.

It seems pretty clear that Palin is articulate when she knows what she's talking about. It's just that the topics she knows about are rather limited, and none of them are particularly relevant to being vice president of the United States.

When people point to those old debate clips and compare them with her performance in recent interviews, I think its tempting to say that she's playing dumb. But as you noted, that would be a counterproductive strategy. Had they waited another week or so to do the interviews, I think it may have made sense. And we all know that McCain threw his chips on the table and 'suspended' his campaign in a vain effort to postpone her date with destiny.

If you ask me, I don't think that Palin is up to the challenge. I can't prove this, obviously, but she has the look of stupor that accompanies a badly regulated regime of anti depressants. The woman has had a child with special needs in her forties, and she has faced an onslaught of microscopic attention (though she should have expected it, and it is nothing compared to what Obama has been through over three years). Moreover, she never seemed to have a command of the issues in Alaska to begin with, and always sidestepped them in order to shuck some folksy yarn and act like your friend's cool mom. There is a lot to know about American foreign policy, the economy and history, and she jsut doesn't know it. And unlike Alaska, the nation as a whole is not a one note vote.

I just don't think she is the candidate today that won the gubernatorial race in Alaska in 06. And I don't think that she could have handled these issues back then either. But who knows, we'll see tonight.

maybe she is better in the debate setting than the interview setting. Really gives her a chance to let her inner pitbull off the leash unlike the soft-focus intimacy of an interview and specifically the Couric interview.

remember that palin may be very versed in issues pertaining to alaska and to the mat su valley, but she is not familiar with domestic and international issues. being poised and confident, and knowing how to turn an answer quickly into a talking point, is easy (or easier) when you are familiar with the issues addressed by the question.

but it was clear from the couric interview that she couldn't do this with some of the questions because she just didn't know what the hell teh questions were talking about. see: the question about gaza. she had no idea, clearly, what gaza was, or what happened there, and how it related to challenges in democracy building. she just knew that it was somehow related to israel, so tried to tack it on to a talking point she was given about iran. but she was nervous, because she didn't know if the talking point even matched the question, and it showed.

remember, even if she is really bright, it is obvious that she has had little, if any exposure to international issues before her VP selection. she has admitted it herself. this means that in five weeks or so, she has had to learn a massive amount of information. think about it. she has had to learn stuff like what the SEC is, who is in charge of it, what short selling is, what Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac are and how they work(ed), who the presidents/pm of Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Spain, the UK, Georgia, Russia, and Afghanistan are and what our relationships with those countries are, a history of our involvement in the middle east, the difference between a sunni and a shia, the different terrorist groups and who supports whom, the differene between the UN, the league of nations, NATO, and the G8, etc etc etc etc. not to mention what McCains policies are, what Obama's policies are, and how McCains are better.

That is a lot to learn in five weeks. i don't think she's "dumb." but i don't think she knew anything about any of that stuff before she was selected. and even for a very bright student, it's an awful lot to learn.

Given the format, all Biden need do to deprive the McCain campaign of what they hope to achieve tonight is attack McCain. If Biden just focuses his remarks on McCain, his policies, and mostly his similarity to Bush, Biden will be gold. Its not important who the media dubs the winner. Whats important is that Biden isn't seen to be beating up on a woman, and hammering home to the independents and undecideds that McCain is not the right candidate.

It's not playing dumb. She really is dumb on topics of national importance, but she can speak fluently on topics of interest to Alaska. That's what explains the difference between her debate performance and what's happening to her now.

If you look at the Charlie Gibson interview, she was fine when talking about Alaska matters. Only when Gibson switched to other things is when she got into trouble, and since the Katie Couric interview was about almost everything EXCEPT Alaska issues, she got into even more trouble there.