Declaring A Winner

This evening millions of Americans tuned in to NBC for the official broadcast of the debate between vice Presidential candidates Democratic Senator Joe Biden and Republican Governor Sarah Palin. Within moments after, and likely during the entirety of the debate, the pundits were spitting and snarling, tearing apart the attacks and the defenses, the weapons and the malfeasances. Doing what pundits do: generating a lot of hubbub about a nicely intelligent, rather surprisingly well-presented debate. What pisses me off, of course, is "who won?"

The answer will undoubtedly be Sarah Palin. This doesn't bother me as much as the reason for the answer, though. Sarah Palin won because she didn't suck.

She didn't falter--as badly as she has in the past--and she didn't coin anymore cheesy catch phrases. She didn't present herself as irrational, illogical or even incapable. And this, my friends, was enough to make her "win".

Right. She didn't suck. So she won. Joe Biden presented--as usual--a well-developed, clearly outlined--if sometimes muddled with varied interests and concerns--argument, but he won't be declared the winner, because his opponent, who was expected to, as she has in the past few weeks, make political gaffe after gaffe, continue to do so. And she didn't.

When we declare the winner of a debate by the degree of improvement from lack of intellect and logic to ability to recite facts, names and dates, occasionally drop a crowd-pleasing line for the good ol' boys, and continue to mispronounce "nuclear" in an apparent attempt to change Merriam-Webster's pronunciation of the word to George W. Bush's, over the polished, professional and brilliant oration of a seasoned political genius, we have declared ourselves a population dominated by its most blatant stupidity. No longer interested in effecting change or creating actual reform, we hang onto blunted catch phrases and repetitive commentaries, and we declare ourselves an educated mass. We are satisfied with the collective input of the lowest common denominator, and it will be reflected by the generations to come.