The Palin/Who Ticket?

A few lines I've heard in the past 25 minutes:

"She learned how to shovel her bullshit better." - Alec Baldwin, on HBO.

"Here's a few lines from Sarah Palin [roll edited one second clips meant to make her look dumb]." - David Letterman (immediately following a different clip called "Palin Debate Recap," and immediately preceding the "Top Ten Messages Left on Sarah Palin's Answering Machine," which itself immediately preceded an interview with Brian Williams from NBC News which concentrated on...Sarah Palin).

"Which of these is not the name of one of Sarah Palin's children? Bristol, Track, or Rifle?" - Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

That's just a few bits I can remember from some late night flicking in the past half-hour. So what does all of this tell me, besides that Dave Letterman is sexually frustrated and wants to nail the Governor of Alaska?

It tells me that no matter how much Palin may be despised by the Left, she is sure getting their attention. A lot of their attention.

Interesting. If she was just a regular flake, they would insult her, ignore her, and move on with the show. If she was truly a buffoon cut from Dan Quayle cloth, you'd hear one or two jabs, and that would be it. But whenever Palin opens her mouth, the entire television universe spends days pouring over her every word. She's like some strange alien that has landed in their midst. "Bears children? Shoots guns? Has an accent? Says funny things like 'soccer game' and 'you betcha?' Hmm. Let us be wary of this beast."

David Letterman now spends almost a quarter of his show discussing Sarah Palin. He delights in replaying her saying that she is just another "Joe Six Pack," though it is Joe Six Pack that pays his salary. I wonder if he knows that, or if decades of living in a swanky New York mansion have obliterated his memories of Indiana.

I channel surfed some cable news this afternoon and watched as they flipped back and forth between "economic meldown" and "who won the debate?" Even as the economy continued to tank, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN couldn't help themselves: they had to keep returning to the topic of Sarah Palin. They didn't spend much time on Biden, beyond a standard "he did well." It was all about Palin. Naturally it was mostly negative press, but there was a constant flow of it.

The media's intense interest in Sarah Palin is shared by the public. Last night, close to 70,000,000 people watched the Palin/Biden debate. That is the highest rated VP debate ever, and it beat the Obama/McCain debate by 33%. Only two other presidential debates come close: Clinton-Perot-Bush in 1992, and Reagan/Carter in 1980 (truly mammoth, with over 80 million viewers and back when the population was a lot smaller, too).

The media bigshots virtually all agree that Palin lost the debate with Biden. There's several polls out that say the public thinks so too, by differing margins. Me, I'm not so sure. There's something about this microscopic scrutiny of her that makes me think two things. One, she is seen as a grave threat to those who don't share her beliefs, and it forces them to discuss her and more importantly think about her. Two, not everyone may like her, but they all want to hear what she says next.

In politics, that's always a good thing. Yet there's a strange irony here. If Palin's stardom and interest continues to rise, she may become the de facto top of the ticket in people's guts if not in their heads. One has to ask: if the Republican ticket becomes the Palin ticket, will they still vote for McCain?