Debate Review. Update: Biden a Slacker?

I tend to be on the side that says Palin did good but not great. She stuck to her talking points entirely too much when she had some great opportunities to hammer Biden hard.

In the first minute of the debate answering the lead-off question, Biden said this with regard to the current financial quagmire:

I think it's neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had. As a consequence, you've seen what's happened on Wall Street.

If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now.

So the Congress has been put -- Democrats and Republicans have been put in a very difficult spot. But Barack Obama laid out four basic criteria for any kind of rescue plan here.

He, first of all, said there has to be oversight. We're not going to write any check to anybody unless there's oversight for the -- of the secretary of Treasury.

Palin should have said something to this effect: How can Senator Obama be trusted to lay out any plans to get us through this when he took the second most money from Fannie Mae behind only another Democrat; Senator Dodd? Your own party, Senator Biden, said in 2003 that Fannie and Freddie were in good shape while Senator McCain was prescient enough to see this disaster brewing back in 2005 and earlier.

A response like that would have put Biden on the defensive immediately and got the country paying attention more deeply than they did. I was a lost opportunity.

Second she mainly stuck to talking points and canned responses, which was to be expected but c'mon, let's interject something besides McCain talking points. Another lost opportunity was when Biden said this:

Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

This is pure and utter BS and Biden knows it. A group that became Hezbollah attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 with backing from Iran. They grew stronger throughout the 1990's and have become the dominant party in Lebanon. When exactly did we kick them out and when exactly did Biden or Obama say to "move NATO forces in there"? Whe they were kicked out, where exactly did Hezbollah go to? Also, I'd like to see one example of Obama's prescience on Hamas winning in "the West Bank" or even Biden mentioning it. The fact that Hamas rules in Gaza and Fatah still controls the West Bank must have escaped Biden. Charles fact checks the hell out of Biden on this one and the proof of his out and out lie is damning. These were such bald-faced lies that it should have been whacked out of the damn park by Palin if she had more insight into the events that shape the world. More on this at Wizbang!

Biden looked old and wasn't especially sharp. He talked like a politician and was good for a lie here and a senior moment there, about what one expects from the Delaware Senator.

Don't get me wrong now, Palin won it but did she do enough to convert Independents? I don't really believe so.

Update: A ratings bonanza! I would bet many who watched say "you betcha" and liked what Palin had to say. We'll see in the next few days.

Update: Joe Biden only lied fourteen times last night. For Biden, that's a slacker effort.