Thursday Night Massacre

The end is nigh for the Willy Weaver Express, the campain of John McCain and the thrilla from Wasilla, Sarah Palin who, sadly enough will have to face Sen. Joe Biden, presently occupied as Democratic candidate for Vice President, but who is still the titular head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The strategy of both contestants will be interesting, but Joe Biden's primary job will put into "whitespeak" why the country should vote for Barack Obama for President and why it is a dangerous thing to think about doing anything else. Mr. Biden will have the task of reassuring folks from Scranton that it's OK to vote for a black guy for President. Mr. Biden will have to be careful not to attack Mrs. Palin directly: after all, SNL is not doing devastating sketches about Mr. Biden. He should give Tina Fey more material so that ultimately, there is a remake of "All in the Family", and Mrs. Palin can play Sally Struthers' heretofore inimitable "Gloria Bunker" who, taking up the faithful opposition to "Meathead" Rob Reiner's raving liberalism, is remade into a modern day Anita Bryant, only way more sexy, but probably more puritanical as well.

After Mr. Biden is through attacking John McCain for 90 minutes and Mrs. Palin is finished with showing how nice she can be at the same time she tries to attack Barack Obama, the colllective national cringe factor will be strained as much as Wall Street and Congress, and we will together see that the present problems are truly not going to be solved by Mr. McCain's moral relativism and backwards looking perspective without the help of a Vice President who will add to, rather than detract from the strength that he, Mr. McCain is going to have to invest into the issues that will dog the next President for the entire length of his Presidency. Or Her Presidency. As in President Sarah Palin? Yes, that issue will be front and center Thursday night. Mr. Biden can sew up the election for himself and Mr. Obama if he shows what a truly great asset he will be to Mr. Obama and just what a formidable team they will make together.

Nothing that Mrs. Palin offers Mr. Biden should be particularly surprising. Mrs. Palin knows about five or six talking points and has been told "just to be herself", and I am certain that the people prepping Mr. Biden do not have to tell him what those talking points are. He should come off like the pit-bull that Mrs. Palin wishes she was, albeit to Mr. McCain, but should leave Mrs. Palin and the rostrum of the debate as clean as a surgeon's operating theater after having performed surgery on Mrs. Palin herself. She will wake up Friday morning, reach for the Post-Dispatch, and say to herself "did I really say that"? She should have to honestly answer herself: "Yes I did." And pick up the phone, call John McCain, and tell him that she has had an epiphany: that she needs to spend more time with her family and that she quits.

In all honesty, I hope that she doesn't. Indeed, I doubt she will. From the looks of that family, nobody knows how to say "no".

Randy Shiner