http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.html?em
"That was then. Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky, whether he's
repeating his "Miss Congeniality" joke twice in the same debate or
speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the
17th time ("The fundamentals of our economy are strong") or repeatedly
confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia,
Spain). McCain's "dismaying temperament," as George Will labeled it,
only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington
during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate
countenance a replay of Al Gore's sarcastic sighing in 2000 didn't
make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but
elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up."
"It's against this backdrop that Palin's public pronouncements,
culminating with her debate performance, have been so striking. The
standard take has it that she's either speaking utter ignorant
gibberish (as to Couric) or reciting highly polished, campaign-written
sound bites that she's memorized (as at the convention and the
debate). But there's a steady unnerving undertone to Palin's
utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and
hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be
president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She
often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away
from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the
hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him
as, at best, a White House place holder."
"But the debate's most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in
recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of
his children were killed in a car crash. Palin's perky response she
immediately started selling McCain as a "consummate maverick" again
was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis's notoriously
cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his
wife being "raped and murdered." If, as some feel, Obama is cool,
Palin is ice cold. She didn't even acknowledge Biden's devastating
personal history."
"After the debate, Republicans who had been bailing on Palin rushed
back to the fold. They know her relentless ambition is the only hope
for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of
ideas. So what if she is preposterously unprepared to run the country
in the midst of its greatest economic crisis in 70 years? She looks
and sounds like a winner."
" Palin is an antidote to the whiny Republican image that Frank
nailed. Alaska's self-styled embodiment of Joe Sixpack is not a
sulker, but a pistol-packing fighter. That's why she draws the crowds
and (as she puts it) "energy" that otherwise elude the angry McCain.
But she is still the candidate for vice president, not president.
Americans do not vote for vice president.
So how can a desperate G.O.P. save itself? As McCain continues to fade
into incoherence and irrelevance, the last hope is that he'll come up
with some new game-changing stunt to match his initial pick of Palin
or his ill-fated campaign "suspension." Until Thursday night, more
than a few Republicans were fantasizing that his final Hail Mary pass
would be to ditch Palin so she can "spend more time" with her
ever-growing family. But the debate reminded Republicans once again
that it's Palin, not McCain, who is their last hope for victory.
You have to wonder how long it will be before they plead with him to
think of his health, get out of the way and pull the ultimate stunt of
flipping the ticket. Palin, we can be certain, wouldn't even blink."
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