Debatable

Anyone know the story of Chuck Wepner?

He is a long-retired heavyweight boxer who served as the inspiration for Rocky by unexpectedly lasting 15 rounds against Muhammad Ali after being inserted as a last-minute fill-in for a title fight in 1975.

I thought about Wepner quite a bit while watching Sarah Palin not embarrass herself during last night's vice presidential debate. She came in as a largely unknown and presumably overmatched contender. Despite expectation, Palin stood in and dodged just enough to make it to the final bell. She absolutely did not win. She will get a lot of credit for just not being decimated.

And fair play to Palin, even though she stated quite early in the debate that she would not be playing fair.

Asked more than once by moderator Gwen Ifill to speak directly to the question of what she would do if elected vice president, Palin said, "I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear ... ."

I understand that obfuscation and dissembling are principal tools for any politician, but can those strategies work if a politician just outright says, "I'm going to obfuscate! I'm going to dissemble"?

No. Because the audience will then spend the rest of the time listening closely for when the politician is not answering questions as asked. Playing that game of gotcha is what kept me up well past my bedtime.

The other time that Palin completely blew it was when she called for and defended deregulation of financial markets but also blamed the worldwide economic crisis on "corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that. Again, John McCain and I, that commitment that we have made, and we're going to follow through on that, getting rid of that corruption."

I really wish Ifill had asked Palin how she and McCain planned to punish corruption in the absence of any rules to prevent corruption.

The upshot is that I remain confirmed in my belief that Palin is unqualified for the vice presidency.

As for Biden's performance, he neither thrilled nor worried. My sister wondered on her blog what qualifies a person to be vice president. Being able to open your mouth most of the time without getting people all in a twitter seems like a baseline.