By Sarah Kliff

There's an abundance of McCain and Obama themed cookies, ice creams and cakes available for order on the Internet. But try and find anything more substantive than dessert and you come up pretty short-handed. So last night, looking to fill that hole, I invited a dozen friends to take their best shot at summing up two years of a historic campaign in one potluck dinner. The requirements: every dish had to say something about the election, the candidates or a particularly memorable campaign moment.

The guests did not disappoint. The dinner, in fact, served as something of a campaign retrospective. Some--like my roommate, who baked Baracklava--played off the candidates' names. Many revived classic campaign one-liners: Pigs (in a blanket) with (ketchup) Lipstick; ‘I Can See Russia' Borscht; and ‘Drill Baby' Bundt Cake, which was covered in a barrel of oil (chocolate sauce).

Others used the opportunity to highlight the candidates' most memorable traits--for better or worse. Biden's gaffes became Sloppy Joes. McCain's Meatballs were 100-percent vegetarian--a reflection of the Republican nominee's "maverick" spirit. Obama's ‘arugula' comment--from way back in August 2007--turned into Obama's Elitist Potato Salad (follow the New York Times recipe, which replaces mayonnaise with goat cheese). There was even a six-pack of bipartisan beer: half Blue Moon, half Red Stripe.

Although the room did contain a few certified election junkies, there was little debate over a favored candidate. This crowd, not surprisingly for a group of 20-somethings in Manhattan, was made up largely of Obama supporters. To them, his win tomorrow seemed like a given, so much of the campaign conversation shifted toward the lighter events of the last fews days: McCain's Saturday Night Live skit, Palin's prank Sarkozy call. No one went home hungry last night, but there might have been one dish missing among the confident Obamans--a slice of humble pie.

Got any campaign-themed recipes? Share them below.

Three signs of confidence from the Obama camp:

I. Ad Wars: While outspending McCain three-to-one on television advertisements between Oct. 7 and Oct. 13, Obama dramatically increased his disbursements in a wide swath of red states as well--"evidence," as the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza writes, "that he is almost entirely on offense with just three weeks left before election day." Here's Chris:

In Florida, for example, Obama is now spending just shy of $5 million a week on television -- a $1.8 million (!) increase from just a week ago. The same pattern is apparent in Indiana (a $900,000 increase in ad spending over the past week), Missouri ($1.4 million increase) and Virginia ($2.3 million increase).

Lest we forget, McCain upped his spending, too. The problem? "The majority of his increased spending [was] in states Republicans carried with ease in recent presidential election." These include North Carolina (a state Bush won with 56 percent of the vote in 2004 and where McCain has recently added more than $700,000 to his buy) and Missouri (Bush 53 percent, $600,000). Having just pulled out of Wisconsin, the RNC is currently advertising mostly in Missouri, Colorado, Indiana and Virginia--again, all red states.

In other words, Obama's cash advantage has forced McCain to play defense instead of offense. With Obama leading by more than seven points in the Bush states of New Mexico (+7.0), Virginia (+8.6) and Iowa (+11.8)--he's also ahead in Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and North Carolina--it's hard to see how McCain can put together a winning map if he's not even trying to encroach on his rival's turf. The only state where McCain is outspending Obama: Maine.

II. Redeployments: As Marc Ambinder reports, Obama is redeploying field staffers from a blue state (Michigan) to a pair of red states (Indiana and North Carolina). Again, if Obama adds Iowa, New Mexico and Virginia to Kerry's 2004 map, it's over. He's won--with or without the Hoosier and Tar Heel States. This latest move indicates that Obama is less worried about defending his terrain--which is understandable, given that McCain has withdrawn from Michigan and now trails by 10.5 percent in the polls--than in pursuing every available path to the largest possible victory.

III. Letting Biden Say Whatever the Heck He Wants: Do you think Joe Biden would inform Ohioans that he'd once been arrested for infiltrating a girl's dormitory if Team Obama was on tenterhooks? Um, no. Here he is in Athens this afternoon: 

It’s good to be back in Athens. Now you say ‘Back in Athens, Biden, when were you here?’ Well I went to the University of Delaware and we came out here to play Ohio University. Now that was 228 years ago and we did just fine, but the thing I loved about the university was that it was such a beautiful town and we all hung around out afterwards.”

Now I made a little mistake here that day, I made a little mistake. I wandered in, I met this lovely group of Ohio University…students... And uh, without knowing it, I shouldn’t admit this on national television because it’ll reveal that I’m over 60, but I thought that we were gonna go get something to eat... So I just said to young, two young women I had met, said well why don’t you…we’ll be right back, I said well I’ll come with you, and they said OK, and I walked into their dormitory and was immediately accosted by a cop who arrested me because back in those days men were not allowed in women’s dormitories.

Not that anyone can control Biden's mouth. But still. 

This may be October--but it's not much of a surprise. In the midst of a financial crisis that's boosted Barack Obama in nearly every key battleground state and cost McCain--according to his own advisers--about "five points" in the national polls, the Republican nominee over the weekend launched an "aggressive assault on... Obama's character" in an attempt to close the polling gap by "shift[ing] the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations."

The onslaught began Saturday, when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told three separate crowds that Obama is "not a man who sees America like you and I see America"--mainly, she said, because he "is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." (She was referencing Weather Underground founder William Ayers--a man with whom Obama does not "appear to have been close," according to the New York Times, and whose "radical views and actions" Obama has never "expressed sympathy for.") It continued Sunday with GOP strategists affiliated with the McCain campaign telling the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder that "they plan to highlight Obama's alleged contacts with individuals who they say have been linked to terrorist organizations, including controversial Columbia Prof. Rashid Khalidi, accused without real evidence of being a former PLO spokesperson." This morning, Palin resurfaced, calling on her running mate--surely not without his campaign's knowledge--to bring up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more," she said in an interview with the New York Times' Bill Kristol. "Those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that - with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave--to me, that does say something about character." And in today New Mexico McCain called his opponent--in the words of one observer--a "mystery, a liar, complicit in the economic crisis and an unaccomplished naïf, at all the same time."

To paraphrase the Bangles: it's just another Muddy Monday.

With less than 30 days to go until Nov. 4, it's no wonder Team McCain is going on the attack. In fact, his own operatives have made their motivations perfectly clear. "We've got to question this guy's associations," a senior Republican strategist told the Washington Post on Saturday. "Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here." This morning, a "top McCain strategist" was even more explicit in an interview with the New York Daily News. "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," he said. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose." In other words, McCain believes that the only way he can win the White House is by painting Obama as a chancy, radical choice who will endanger all that America holds dear--and hoping that the electorate votes for the Republican ticket (the "safer," more familiar option) by default. As the Arizonan's new attack ad puts it, "Obama [is] too risky for America."

There's no doubt, then, how McCain and Co. will spend the final month of the 2008 campaign. The question is: Will it work?

My hunch is no. Here are five reasons why:

1. The Economy Isn't Going Anywhere: This morning, the Dow fell nearly 800 points, dipping below 10,000 for the first time since 2004. The U.S. economy dumped 159,000 jobs in September. Unemployment hit a five-year high. Americans have lost a combined $1 trillion in net worth over the last month alone. Whatever concerns voters might have about Obama's former minister or a guy the senator once sat on a board with pale in comparison at this point to concerns about their own economic security; the economy, simply put, is bigger than Bill Ayers. Every time Team McCain mentions Ayers, Obama will simply argue that his rival is ignoring the economic elephant in the room. "Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance," he said yesterday in Asheville, N.C. "I want you to know that I'm going to keep on talking about the issues that matter--about the economy and health care and education and energy." Obama looks like change; McCain looks like he's changing the subject. As a matter of mechanics, it's going to be very difficult for McCain to transform an election occurring in the midst of the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression into a referendum on his opponent's Rolodex, especially given that...

2. Ayers and Wright Aren't Exactly "Breaking News": The Politico's Ben Smith first reported on Ayers last February; the country spent all of April talking about Wright. In other words, every "association" that Palin and McCain are intending to highlight before Nov. 4 has already been highlighted. Reporters are treating this as a story about McCain's newly negative tactics--not as an opportunity to reheat material they first served up last spring. That's bad news for McCain. Sure, some voters are unsettled by the fact that Obama once worked on an education project with a unrepentant (if rehabilitated) '60s radical and spent decades listening to sermons by a man who adheres to Black Liberation Theology--and they're not voting for Obama, at least in part, because of it. But given that the Illinois senator went on to win the Democratic nomination and build a sizable lead in state and national surveys after the Ayers and Wright stories first broke, it appears as if many swing voters--not conservatives, but swing voters--have largely decided that they're comfortable with Obama's past. Absent any new revelations, it's hard to imagine that rehashed information will change their views--except, perhaps, on the sort of campaign McCain is running. The fact is, Ayers and Wright are probably priced--at least in part--into the current polling, which means...

3. There Aren't a Whole Lot of Swingers to Be Swung: If the election were held today, Obama would beat McCain 52 percent to 44 percent, with four percent of the vote going to third-party candidates (at least according to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll). Of course, the election is still a month away--which means, in theory, that McCain can still catch up. The problem for the Arizona senator is that he doesn't have much room for error. Right now (again, according to Rasmussen), 44 percent of voters say they're certain they'll vote for Obama, while a mere 38 percent say the same thing about McCain. That leaves only 14 percent of the electorate up for grabs--an eight-percent bloc that's currently leaning toward Obama plus a six-percent bloc that's currently leaning toward McCain. Imagine a room with 100 people in it. Forty-four of them are already on the left side; they're voting for Obama, no matter what. Thirty-eight are on the right side; they're sold on McCain. In the middle, eight voters are leaning to the left; six are leaning to the right. To win, Obama must simply make sure that six of his eight leaners vote Democratic; he can afford to lose two of his leaners to McCain (perhaps over Wright/Ayers/etc.) McCain, on the other hand, must retain all six of leaners AND steal six of the eight voters who currently prefer Obama. In other words, he has to double his share of the persuadable electorate between now and Nov. 4. Could it happen? It could. But it's unlikely, mainly because...

4. Last-Minute Attacks May Damage McCain As Much--if Not More--Than Obama: FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver makes an important point: 

If the McCain campaign brings up William Ayers -- or Jeremiah Wright -- it will almost certainly be seen as attack politics. This might seem to be stating the obvious. But remember that this wasn't the case during the primaries. The Wright and Ayers stories were instead driven by actual news -- ABC's reporting of Wright's inflammatory sermons, for instance -- and were largely not pushed by the Clinton campaign. So unless McCain's oppo research team is sitting on some fresh news about Obama's ties to Ayers or Wright, the stories are liable to be reported as a typical partisan attack, which will impeach their credibility in the public's eyes and reduce their staying power.

The only news here is McCain's negative strategy; we've already litigated Wright and Ayers. As a result, Silver adds, "it may be quite difficult for McCain to attack Obama in this fashion without significantly damaging his own brand." For much of the cycle, McCain's net favorability rating--the gap between the percentage of voters who feel positively about him and the percentage who feel negatively--tended to rise and fall with Obama's. But while Obama's net favorables have surged to about 22 percent over the past few weeks, McCain's have plummeted to six or so. By recycling old attacks on Obama, McCain may narrow the gap between Illinois senator's positive and negative numbers. But the strategy is liable to have the same effect on McCain himself. Sure, partisans may cheer McCain's efforts. But at the end of the day, it's unlikely that McCain would emerge from a slash-and-burn campaign having increased his net favorability rating. Obama's, meanwhile, would probably still hover in the double digits--even if it takes a few hits. That disparity--the simple fact that voters now see Obama in a more favorable light than McCain--would make it extremely difficult for the Arizonan to pry three-quarters of Obama's leaners away from him (which, again, is the only way he'll reach 50 percent in the polls). GOP strategist Lee Atwater famously proclaimed that any candidate with unfavorables over 40 was dead. McCain's currently average 39.6 percent. Making matters worse is the fact that...

5. The Obama Campaign Has Muddied the Waters on Riskiness and Associations: It's the least remarked-upon aspect of the current financial crisis--but perhaps the most important from a political perspective. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers late last month, Obama has used the meltdown as an opportunity to portray himself as a safe and steady leader. At the same time, he has framed McCain's every move as needlessly reckless--or, to use Team Obama's lingo, "erratic." The point? To reverse the conventional wisdom and portray McCain as the riskier choice. Obama has succeeded, at least in part: according to the latest CBS News poll, 61 percent of voters say they're very or somewhat confident in Obama's ability to handle the economy. McCain's score? A mere 49 percent. Meanwhile, 44 percent approve of Obama's handling of the financial crisis versus only 35 percent for McCain. As a result, 52 percent of voters now say that Obama is prepared to be president, up six points since late September. Earlier this cycle, McCain would have had an easier time defining Obama as dangerous radical. But now that the electorate has witnessed Obama "in action"--and seems to have decided that it prefers his economic leadership to McCain's--the burden of proof is much higher. Swing voters now have a choice: do they believe what McCain says about Obama--i.e., "Who is Barack Obama?"--or what they themselves have seen him say and do? I suspect they're inclined to trust their own eyes and ears over innuendo, for better or for worse. This wasn't always the case.

Also complicating McCain's new message: the fact that Chicago has authorized its surrogates to mention McCain's and Palin's questionable associations whenever they're asked about Wright or Ayers. That's why on Meet the Press yesterday Paul Begala "noted that McCain once 'sat on the board of a very right wing organization,' the U.S. Council for World Freedom"--a group whose "parent organization" was once called "a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites" by the Anti-Defamation League. It's also why liberal journalists are complaining that Todd Palin belonged to a political party that wanted Alaska to secede from the union--and that his wife once attended "a sermon by the founder of Jews for Jesus, who argued that the Palestinian terrorist acts against Israel were God's 'judgment' on the Jews because they hadn't accepted Jesus." Finally, it's why the Obama campaign released a 13-minute documentary about McCain's involvement in the "Keating Five" scandal earlier this afternoon.

Does today's tit-for-tat represent "a new kind of politics"? Hardly. I tend to think--like most swing voters I've met--that these "guilt by association" attacks are idiotic. And Obama's Keating onslaught is particularly iffy, given that the scandal happened 17 years ago and McCain acknowledged misjudgment. That said, Chicago's aggressive posture ensures that every voter who hears about Ayers will also hear about the Alaska Independence Party. Same goes for Wright and Keating. Ultimately, if McCain can't convince swing voters that Obama is substantially riskier and more "tainted" than he is--if his attacks elicit equally irrelevant (but equally unflattering) attacks from the Dems--it's hard to see how he'll benefit from baring his teeth.

According to the nonpartisan researchers at Factcheck.org (a NEWSWEEK partner), Biden and Palin  "were not 100 percent accurate [in St. Louis last night]--to say the least." Here's how the cookie crumbled:

• Palin mistakenly claimed that troop levels in Iraq had returned to "pre-surge" levels. Levels are gradually coming down but current plans would have levels higher than pre-surge numbers through early next year, at least.
• Biden incorrectly said "John McCain voted the exact same way" as Obama on a controversial troop funding bill. The two were actually on opposite sides.
• Palin repeated a false claim that Obama once voted in favor of higher taxes on "families" making as little as $42,000 a year. He did not. The budget bill in question called for an increase only on singles making that amount, but a family of four would not have been affected unless they made at least $90,000 a year.
• Biden wrongly claimed that McCain "voted the exact same way" as Obama on the budget bill that contained an increase on singles making as little as $42,000 a year. McCain voted against it. Biden was referring to an amendment that didn't address taxes at that income level.
• Palin claimed McCain's health care plan would be "budget neutral," costing the government nothing. Independent budget experts estimate McCain's plan would cost tens of billions each year, though details are too fuzzy to allow for exact estimates.
• Biden wrongly claimed that McCain had said "he wouldn't even sit down" with the government of Spain. Actually, McCain didn't reject a meeting, but simply refused to commit himself one way or the other during an interview.
• Palin wrongly claimed that "millions of small businesses" would see tax increases under Obama's tax proposals. At most, several hundred thousand business owners would see increases.
  

For full details on these misstatements--and on additional factual disputes and dubious claims--click here.

First things first: they both survived.

For accuracy's sake, though, we should probably consider referring to tonight's "Showdown in St. Louis" as the "Showdowns in St. Louis." It was the Tale of Two Debates. In one ring we watched Sarah Palin battling Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin. In the other we saw Joe Biden jousting with John McCain. They both delivered somewhat uneven performances--but both "won" their individual bouts. The question is which one moved his or her boss closer to victory on Nov. 4.

Palin's plan was simple: deliver your talking points and pivot to an attack on Barack Obama--regardless of what moderator Gwen Ifill asks. The results of this strategy were mixed. For one thing, Palin's frequent attempts to bait Biden into making one of his famous "gaffes" or saying something "condescending"--she repeatedly sought to provoke his ire by pointing out issues (i.e., Iraq war funding, experience) on which he and Obama have parted ways in the past--did not succeed. Not only did Biden resist the temptation to pull a Lazio and charge her podium, but he delivered crisp, clear ripostes that began with the words "that charge is not true" instead of, say, "Governor Palin is lying." Biden was so focused on being polite, in fact, that the one time he said "Sarah," he immediately reverted to "Governor." That said, Palin did manage to keep her rival on the defensive--especially on raising taxes--for substantial stretches of the debate. That's always a plus.

Palin was her strongest, though, when transitioning from the topic at hand to a folksy, emotive talking point--an attempt, as she put it, "to talk straight to the American people and let 'em know my track record" regardless of what "[Biden] or the moderator want to hear." When Ifill tried to steer the conversation to Capitol Hill, for example--did we see the "worst of Washington or the best of Washington... play out" in recent Congressional jockeying over the bailout bill?--Palin detoured to the soccer field: "You know, I think a good barometer here... is to go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, 'How are you feeling about the economy?' And I'll bet you, you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice." To practiced ears, "soccer" sounded like a line that Palin had memorized and repeated. But for voters who'd only seen her fumbling through the Katie Couric interviews--or had only seen SNL satirizing her fumbles--Palin sounded clear enough, compelling enough and common-sensical enough to come across as a competent public figure (as opposed to a caricature of incompetence). Throughout the debate, she reverted to this mode again and again, mentioning her "Joe Six-Pack" roots in "Middle America" one minute and admitting that it was time to stop "fingerpointing" and move past Bush's "blunders" the next. It was the main reason she "exceeded expectations."

The problem for Palin, however, was that she often seemed to run out of (or simply spew out) talking points--at which point her answers would disintegrate into the confusing "blizzards of words" that Charlie Gibson recently endured. Asked about the causes of climate change, for example, the Alaskan seemed unable to muster an intelligible response. "I'm not one to attribute every man--activity of man to the changes in the climate," she said. "There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.... What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?" Asked what circumstances would force her to deploy America’s nuclear weaponry, Palin chose to answer a different question. “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet," she said. "So those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.” And her riff on Israel was similarly scrambled:

A two-state solution is the solution. And Secretary Rice, having recently met with leaders on one side or the other there, also, still in these waning days of the Bush administration, trying to forge that peace, and that needs to be done, and that will be top of an agenda item, also, under a McCain-Palin administration. Israel is our strongest and best ally in the Middle East. We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust, despite, again, warnings from Iran and any other country that would seek to destroy Israel, that that is what they would like to see. 

There was an argument in there somewhere. But it was buried amid a pile-up of talking points.

This isn't to say Palin bombed. Far from it. Over the course of 90 minutes, she sounded smart, savvy and spunky enough, often enough, to seem to belong on stage--and to give commentators the grist they needed to call it a comeback. (That's why she's better suited to debates than network interviews: no filter, plenty of time.) But there were simply too many of these "huh?" moments--especially near the end of the event--to convince the 60 percent of voters who told ABC News this week that Palin is unprepared for the presidency that they're mistaken. Her trajectory tonight mirrored her trajectory since St. Paul--solid at the start, shakier over time. In St. Louis, Palin proved she can be an able communicator--and prevented herself from becoming a perpetual punchline. But I doubt that she convinced many skeptical swing voters that she's qualified to lead the free world.

This readiness deficit redounds to Biden's--and by extension Obama's--benefit. Biden didn't have a perfect night. His performance seemed to veer from muted to blustery, and it took him half an hour to find his footing. But he never seemed arrogant, condescending or chauvinistic. He never blathered on endlessly. And he certainly never put his foot in his mouth. More importantly, Biden did what he came to do--make a clear case against John McCain. And he did it with answers that were more detailed, less rhetorical and far more responsive to the questions than Palin's. You may disagree with his arguments. Many will. But it's impossible to say he wasn't polite, persuasive and well-informed. In fact, he even out-emoted Palin, silently fighting back tears while recalling his son’s near-death after the horrific car accident that killed his wife and daughter in 1972. People are "looking for help," he said, choking up. "They're not looking for more of the same."

Ultimately, partisans will ignore the errors and find much to cheer in each candidate's performance. But when it comes to the all-important swing voters, Biden may have the edge. Unlike pundits, undecideds don't come equipped with unique, finely-calibrated expectations for each candidate. Unlike partisans, they're not preconditioned to support the politician who flatters their ideological biases. They're just looking for the most plausible president--or in this case, vice president. Palin delivered an appealing performance. But I suspect that undecideds will see Biden as more vice-presidential.

So far, the surveys seem to support my hunch. CNN's quick-release poll gave the debate to the Delaware senator, 51 percent to 36 percent, and 46 percent of undecided voters surveyed by CBS News agreed (21 percent thought Palin won). Palin's problem wasn't likability: 54 percent of CNN respondents picked Palin in that category; only 36 percent chose Biden. It was preparedness. In fact, the debate didn't move Palin's readiness meter one iota: 54 percent of voters said she wasn't qualified to be president before the debate, and 53 percent said the same thing afterwards. Are these stats the final say? Hardly. But even if the voters ultimately decide that the Showdowns in St. Louis were a draw, there's no chance that they'll prove impactful enough to alter the basic contours of the race. Right now, Obama leads by an average of six points and has broken 50 percent in several polls--with only 33 days to go. For McCain, a tie won't do the trick.

In other words, survival is all well and good. But it's not the same thing as winning.

UPDATE, Oct. 3: For an analysis of each candidate's factual missteps, click here.
 

 By Sarah Kliff

Tina Fey may be the most popular woman playing Sarah Palin these days. But she's not the most influential. That honor goes to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who has been tapped by Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden to stand in for Palin as he prepares for Thursday night's debate. Granholm is the first female to win her state's highest office; she was first elected in 2002, after serving four years as the state's first female attorney general.

Biden, Granholm and a handful of top campaign aides have spent the first half of this week at the Wilmington Sheraton Suites getting ready to rumble. One adviser in the room, who did not want to be named discussing campaign strategy, describes the prep sessions as more conversational than a formal mock debate might be. The group is focused on countering Palin's "prepared one-liner and quick jab" style. The campaign chose Granholm, this source says, "because she's a stellar debater who crushed Amway heir Dick Devos in her own debates in 2006 and herself had run in 2002 as an outsider and reformer."

Several days into her stint as Palin surrogate, Granholm spoke with NEWSWEEK about the Alaska governor, what she and the politician she's playing have in common—and why debating a woman is different from debating a man. Excerpts:

KLIFF: What was your reaction to being asked to help prep Senator Biden?
Granholm: As you can imagine, it is such a great honor to be asked to participate in such a meaningful way in this all-important presidential election. I think the world of Joe Biden—and even more so after this experience… I'd met him before, certainly, but we had never worked together as intensely as we have over the past few days.

How have you been preparing him?
I'm not going to comment on the prep. It's still pre-debate, so I'm going to avoid those questions.

In general, do you think there's a difference between debating a male and a female opponent?
I do think, generally, it is more difficult for a man to debate a woman. I think that citizens have certain expectations still ingrained in them about how men and women should behave and comport themselves. And for both sides, there are pitfalls.

Such as?
As a man, you don't want to be perceived as beating up on a woman. As a woman, you don't want to be perceived as being shrill or unlikable or harsh. I think those are things that I'm sure both sides are keeping in mind.

How have you prepared for your own debates, mostly against male opponents?
I've really tried to show that I can throw a punch and could take a punch. You're in there playing in the big leagues, playing with the big boys; you've got to show that you can throw and land some punches of your own.

Do you think that women are judged differently when they run for office?
Women often use that Ann Richards line about how you have to be twice as good as a woman to be considered as good as a man … That sort of striving to be twice as good, either in your credentials or in your ability to govern, is very important for a woman, because there aren't that many of us yet in these positions. You have to really demonstrate that you are capable of taking this on.

What about how they run and present themselves?
I… hate to say it, but women running for office have to run like a man. The fact that you're a woman is obvious. You don't need to talk about it. I would encourage women to downplay the gender issue as much as you can. If you're married with kids, obviously the voters want to know about your family. But I never put the kids or the mom thing out on Front Street because they're electing an executive. Being a mom clearly demonstrates that you can relate to what people are feeling and experiencing, and you don't want to hide that because that's part of why you'd be an effective executive. But you're not running as a mom, you're running as an executive, and that's what [voters] want. Most people want responsible executives. You have to be pragmatic. They want someone who is a fiscal tightwad usually and able to make tough decisions. I think you have to convey to people that you are the best executive around.

Has gender played a role in your races?
[I'm always asked] how can she do it when she has kids at home. It happens to every woman that runs. You just sort of have to blow it off and say, 'I'm sure you ask that same question of my male counterpart who happens to have kids.' That's just part of the deal.

You first ran for statewide office in 1998, when you were elected attorney general in Michigan. Looking at this presidential election, has anything changed over the past decade?
The fact that Sarah Palin can openly talk about her family and have the kids be part of the campaign and all of that, which is something that men have done for a long time that women haven't really done. So I do think things have changed. It's not only accepted, but people are applauding that. When I first ran, the counsel was really, 'People don't want to know about all that.' I do think that's evolved. I think that has evolved with respect to people just accepting that women are good executives, can get things done.

In all seriousness, do you see any similarities between yourself and Governor Palin?
We're governors. There are the obvious comparisons: we have kids in sports, and I attend the parent-teacher conferences just like she does. So I think there are those similarities, certainly. We're both first female governors.

One Biden aide described both of you as outsiders and reformers.
That's true, too. I think women can do that because it's obvious if there's not been a woman in that position, you're going to bring a different perspective no matter what. So it's natural for women to take on that role as outsider.

READ THE REST HERE. 

Photos: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images (left); Henny Ray Abrams / AP
 

ITEM! When Sen. Joe Biden's campaign plane landed at Signature Flight Support in St. Louis this afternoon around 4:00 p.m Eastern, Gov. Sarah Palin's plane was still on the tarmac. How did I know? Because Palin's plane actually says "McCain-Palin"--unlike Biden's, which features the name of Minneapolis's low-cost Sun Country carrier: 

Wasn't Obama supposed to be the candidate with all the cash?

ITEM! The meal on board Joe Force One this afternoon was the appropriately named "Philadelphia Executive Pack": a cheesesteak or chicken cheesesteak with a soft pretzel and Tastykake on the side:

 

Clearly this was some sort of pre-debate comfort food for Sen. Biden, who lives well within the suburban orbit of Philadelphia. (As it was for Stumper, who grew up on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.) My only question is whether it was the "Breakfast of Champions" sort of comfort food--or more like a last meal.

Hotcha! Thank you ladies and germs. I'll be here all week.
 

Joe Biden and wife Jill arrive in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS--If you've never seen a presidential campaign manager hold an "availability" with a gaggle of national political reporters--they call it an "avail" for short--then you should ... well, consider yourself blessed. Basically, the campaign manager meanders toward the hacks; the hacks swarm like a flock of hornets, waving their tiny digital recorders in the air and shouting questions; and the campaign manager spews out answers as if he were an incredibly unconvincing automaton sent back from the future with nothing but inane talking points installed in his neural-net processor. It's riveting.

I mention this because on the flight this afternoon from Wilmington, Del., to St. Louis, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe--a boyish, buzzcut fellow who smiles inexplicably after every sentence, giving him the air of someone who's perpetually pleased with himself--sauntered back to the press section of the cabin and held a pre-debate avail. Nothing he said resembled normal human speech in the slightest. But what Plouffe's answers did reveal is how Team Obama plans to spin tonight's event. Because when it comes to presidential debates, it doesn't matter what actually happens on stage--the campaigns already know what they're going to say about it. (This goes for Team McCain as well, which has gotten itself in a ridiculous snit over the selection of Gwen Ifil as moderator.) Here's what I heard from my front-row seat:
 
If Palin does well tonight, Plouffe and Co. will simply dismiss her performance as an entertaining sideshow, claiming that voters want something more serious from their leaders. "I'm sure this will be a very entertaining debate tonight," he said. "We expect that she'll have very witty, biting lines that she'll get off, and all of you who are like figure-skating judges will give her some credit for that. But we think that the American people who are watching at home tonight, who are thinking of their challenges and fundamentally unhappy with the direction of the country ... We think that Joe Biden will do a very good job of speaking to them. Tonight's important, but so is [the presidential debates scheduled for] next Tuesday and Oct. 15." In fact, you're almost certain to hear Plouffe recycle his dismissive "witty and biting" assessment if Palin throws a few good jabs--he repeated it three times over the course of our 10-minute conversation.

Team Obama also has a defense ready if Biden unleashes one of his famous gaffes: call it an example of his plainspoken honesty, then quickly shift the spotlight to McCain's policies. "Joe Biden's just going to talk about what's in his heart," Plouffe said. "He's just an honest person, a plainspoken person. I'm sure there will be a gaffe watch tonight. But the gaffes that matter are what George Bush has done to the country and what John McCain wants to do." Also watch for the Obama folks to criticize McCain--more in sorrow than in anger--for engaging in behavior as "small" as latching onto a slip on the tongue: "Listen, this a big-stakes election and they keep trying to take it small. Tactics that the McCain campaign is engaged in at the end of the day do their campaign a disservice. I believe that with all of my heart."

And what, you ask, if it's Palin who makes a mistake? Expect Team Obama to link her error to the narrative they've been trying to attach to McCain for the past few weeks: that he's unreliable and even "erratic." As Plouffe put it on the plane, "we've had a consistent, relentless focus on the middle class. We think consistency matters in politics. There's been an erraticness in the McCain campaign over the last 10 days that I think has puzzled voters. So we'll see what [Governor] Palin does tonight."

Finally, don't be surprised if Chicago does a little gloating--assuming Biden emerges unscathed. In typical "expectations game" mode, Plouffe at first told us that Palin was an "extremely good debater." He then upped his assessment to "a great debater" who "won each debate [in Alaska] convincingly." By the end of the avail, he was heralding Palin as "one of the best debaters in American politics." At that, reporters started to laugh. "No really, she is!" countered Plouffe. If Biden somehow manages to vanquish one of the most formidable orators in the history of humankind tonight, Plouffe will surely want to boast about it, right?

Not that I'd expect the American people to take him any more seriously than we did.

Well she's from the coldest state
A surprising candidate
She's in the NRA cause she hunts moose

She really wants to drill
But the bailout makes her ill
She's my favorite hockey mom
'Cause I got a crush on Sarah Palin

WILMINGTON, Del.--After climbing into a taxi outside Wilmington's Amtrak station just now--I'm flying out to St. Louis with the Obama campaign--the first thing I did, naturally, was ask my cab driver about the depot's most famous customer: Joe Biden.

Have you ever seen the senator in person? I said, assuming he had. Biden never fails to mention--in what's become stump shorthand for his blue-collar roots--that he rides the train home from Washington every night the Senate is in session.

I wasn't disappointed. "All the time," said Calvin Peters, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Just last night, in fact. Sometimes I see him at the 7-Eleven, sometimes he's shopping at the grocery store. At the station, he talks to the cops or even the other cab drivers. And he always makes sure to say hello to Mr. Chen, who owns the Presto! Cafe."

So I'm guessing you're going to watch tonight's debate? "Oh, yeah," said the 29-year old. "Absolutely. I can't wait." When I asked who was going to win, however, Peters refused to venture a prediction. "I just want to see Sarah be Sarah," he said. "You know, you read about her on the blogs and watch people talk about her on TV. But I'm just gonna wait until tonight and see. No judgments." He paused--and then started cracking up. "I hope it's as hilarious as Tina Fey on SNL." He was still laughing.

Having just outed himself as an Obama-Biden partisan, Peters continued. "Biden, man, he can just sit back and let her hang herself. 'Next question!'" Seems unlikely, I offered.  After all, the guy can't stop himself from speaking--and misspeaking. "But that's what I like about him. He speaks his mind. I'm sure he won't be able to help himself tonight, but that's just Joe. It's his appeal." Whether voters who don't know Biden from the train station and the 7-Eleven agree--well, that may be a different story.

As we were pulling up to the Marriot Courtyard Downtown, Peters smiled and handed me his card. "It's too bad I never got a picture with him," he said, absent-mindedly. I told him that the senator would be back in Wilmington tomorrow to address his son's National Guard unit before it ships out to Iraq. "Really? I'll have to bring my camera," said Peters. "Before it's too late."

Palin preps at McCain's Sedona, Ariz. ranch 

Tonight's vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin promises to be great entertainment. In fact, I fully expect the Match-Up in Missouri to be the most riveting example of political theater since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared together in Unity, N.H. wearing matching periwinkle attire and identical smile-like expressions. Like that display of post-primary togetherness, tonight's face-off will surely inspire a lot of sound and fury from the Beltway bloviators eager to overanalyze every aspect of the exchange: body language, sentence structure, truthiness and strategery. But in the end, I suspect that the Biden-Palin title bout will signify nothing--at least in electoral terms.

That's not to say the event won't be fun. It will be. It will be fun to watch Palin as she strives to prove that the "clueless hockey mom" caricature that's taken hold in recent weeks (Palin + Couric = Tina Fey) isn't true. And it will be fun to watch Biden as he struggles to overcome 35 years of unchecked public verbosity and keep his mouth from saying anything that could be construed as arrogant, sexist or downright dumb. It will certainly be more fun than watching  McCain and Obama morph into joyless automatons last week in Mississippi. There's dramatic tension here--a combustible dynamic. We don't know what will happen.

But the truth is, whatever happens, it won't have much bearing on the outcome in November. Expectations for Palin--the star of tonight's show--are laughably low. After a week in which she implied that Russia was planning to invade the United States, refused to reveal a single newspaper or magazine she liked to read, couldn't name any Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade and seemed to contradict her boss's position on attacking al Qaeda in Pakistan--among other things--people have stopped wondering whether she's qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency and started wondering whether she's qualified to open her mouth in public. The upside of this is that Palin shouldn't have much trouble exceeding expectations; in Alaska, she proved herself to be an able, appealing debater, and anyone who's watched her speak--pre-Couric--knows that she's a smart, savvy politician. The downside is that many people have already decided that Palin isn't experienced enough to be president--and that's not the kind of doubt a single debate performance can erase. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 60 percent of voters say that Palin isn't ready to lead the free world, versus only 35 percent who say she is--a 27-point net negative swing since Sept. 7. What's more, about half of all voters worry about McCain taking office at age 72, up from about 40 percent in earlier polls. As a result, a full third of the electorate is now less likely to vote for the ticket because of Palin.

That's why tonight isn't likely to have much of an effect on McCain's chances. It's like the high jump. Clear a four-foot bar, even by a mile, and you get credit for clearing a four-foot bar--not for being a world-class athlete. With a strong performance, Palin can prove that she's not an incompetent speaker--and prevent herself from becoming a punchline (which is crucial to her political future). But she won't suddenly strike swing voters as qualified for the presidency. A bad performance, in turn, will confirm the public's doubts and cement McCain's recent slide in the polls--leaving the GOP exactly where it was when the day began (i.e. losing by seven or eight points). Republican and Democratic strategists agree that the market meltdown has permanently altered the contours of this year's presidential race. A spunky showing tonight--which I fully expect Palin to deliver--won't change that.

For Biden, the stakes are even lower. Tonight, the Delaware senator won't even attempt to "beat" Palin. There's simply no point. First, any mistakes she makes will prove far more damning than whatever case he might make against her. Second, making a case against her--even if it's fair--only gives McCain and Co. an opening to distract the press and the public with claims that Biden is an patronizing sexist pig (or whatever). Finally, Biden knows that voters aren't voting for or against Palin--or him for that matter. So there's simply no reason to undermine her. All of which points to one strategy: building Obama up, bringing McCain down--and ignoring the Mooseburger Queen of Wasilla. Ultimately, Biden has to do very little tonight to succeed. He doesn't have to prove that he's ready for the presidency; according to the ABC/Post poll, 70 percent of voters already think he is. He simply has to exceed the media's ridiculously low expectations by not making a gaffe. If he shows he can be an effective surrogate for Obama in the process--fire off a few anti-McCain zingers; appear experienced enough to make any contrast with Palin self-evident--that's merely icing on the cake. And even if Biden doesn't go gaffe-free--a strong possibility, given his know-it-all, foot-in-mouth tendencies--it's unlikely that Obama's sizable new polling lead will disappear. People won't forget their economic worries just because Joe Biden said something odd on TV.

Tonight, Chris Matthews and Co. will tell you that the St. Louis Showdown could change everything. Don't believe them. This evening's debate may produce a lot of Beltway bloviation--but it's unlikely to change the actual political landscape. So pop your popcorn, sip your soda--and sit back and enjoy the show.

UPDATE, 5:18 p.m.: One caveat: if Palin commits a major gaffe--not misstating a policy position or flubbing a fact but, say, staring in utter silence for 10 or more seconds--then it will be very difficult for the McCain campaign to recover. But I don't expect that to happen.

NEWSWEEK's Sarah Kliff reports from Washington University in St. Louis--her alma mater--on the run-up to tonight's much-anticipated vice presidential debate. 

ST. LOUIS--At Washington University in St. Louis, hosting a presidential debate has become a bit of a routine: this is the fifth time the school has been selected, and the fourth showdown it has actually had (the 1996 showdown here was canceled at the last minute). The campus feels much as it did in 2004, when I was a student here, and President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry were in town to throw down. Chris Matthews has set up his Hardball stage in the exact same location as before. The campus dining halls are running the same donkey vs. elephant cookie contest. (Predictably, students have purchased more donkey cookies). They even have a special “debate door:” created during the 1992 debate, its sole purpose is providing reporters with easier access to the media filing center. It’s unlocked a few days prior to each debate and shut the day after, not to be opened until the next war of words.

But even for a university accustomed to the media maelstrom that goes with hosting a presidential debate, Thursday night's showdown poses special challenges. The school simply never expected a running mate match-up to be such a circus. “It definitely hasn’t gotten easier,” says Fred Volkman, vice chancellor for public affairs, who has been through all four of the university’s debates. “We’ve never seen interest like this.” The Commission on Presidential Debates has credentialed 3,100 journalists to cover the show--up 300 from the university’s 2004 debate and up 600 from the last cycle’s veep contest. As Joani Wardell, media director for the commission, said at a recent media briefing, “We had a large contingency from Alaska and Delaware who suddenly decided they needed to be here. I think I heard from every single radio station in the state of Alaska.” Forty television trucks have parked outside the debate site—about double the number that turned up for the Bush-Kerry clash in 2004.

The veep debate initially seemed a consolation prize. “At first, administrators at Wash. U. kind of felt like they had been shafted,” says junior Greg Allen, who edits the Washington University Political Review. “They kind of just expected a presidential debate” after having been selected consistently over the past 16 years.” In fact, the school's role as host of top-of-the-ticket debates has become a selling point in its admissions strategy, along with nice dorms and good food. (When I was a tour guide here a few years back, the likelihood of seeing a presidential debate was one of the talking points in the script we read to prospective students.) “We were told that we were going to get a presidential one,” says junior Scott Statman, who lives in the Kappa Sigma fraternity, about 10 yards from Thursday night's debate site. “It was kind of cool [when we got a vice presidential debate], but also kind of a let down.”

And, then, enter Sarah Palin. “All of a sudden, it was like we had the best one that everyone wanted to see,” says Statman. “We had gone from the debate no one wanted to the debate everyone wanted.” The campus was suddenly energized, he says; his house has been plastered in Obama posters. “I sent out the second Palin skit from SNL earlier today and everyone is watching it,” says Statman.  And it's not just the students who are homing in. “News-wise, I think this is it," says Allen. "McCain and Obama are so known, and so well-versed, that the debates aren’t going to reveal much about them. Here you have the potential for things to get a lot more confrontational and to learn a lot more about the candidates.”

Those candidates, meanwhile, are still thousands of miles from St. Louis. The Palin team has been prepping the GOP candidate on how to handle Biden’s strengths--most notably foreign policy. The Alaska governor has been using McCain's top foreign-policy aide, Randy Scheunemann, as a stand-in for Biden. Meanwhile, the Democrats are hunkered down at a Wilmington Sheraton Suites, using a converted gym with two podiums;  Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is playing Palin. Press secretary David Wade describes the preparations as less focused on specific subjects than on Palin’s debating style. "It's clear watching Gov. Palin's past debates that she's kind of like Sollozzo in The Godfather: 'very good with a knife,'" says Wade. "This Cicero of the Snow delivers these jabs with a smile. She comes from broadcast journalism and she shouldn't be underestimated."

Twenty-four hours out, many Washington University students looked like they were having trouble passing the time. Forty or so clustered around a half-built Hardball set Wednesday afternoon to catch a 4 p.m. sound check. Others watched a Clinton event on the flat-screen TVs in the student center. Only a diligent handful studied for exams. Janice Warren, who has worked at the university during the 2004 debate, says this contest “is all that students are talking about.” “Everyone just wants to see Palin,” says sophomore Seth Feldman. “Whether you want to see her do well or want to see her get ripped apart, you want to see her.” He hasn’t decided where he’ll watch the debate. He’s not among the 300 students chosen from a lottery of 7,300 to receive a ticket, so he’ll likely hunker down at his frat house or a friend’s apartment--or one of the half-dozen debate watching parties sponsored by university groups. But he knows he'll be tuning in. “Everyone,” he says, “has got to be watching this one.”

With Holly Bailey
 

By Carl Sullivan 

The gift of gab is no handicap in politics, so it’s not surprising that the 2008 presidential and VP candidates have Irish roots-all of them. This is probably the most Irish ticket collectively in American history,” says Megan Smolenyak, chief family historian at Ancestry.com, who has been studying the candidates’ genealogy.

Ounce for ounce, Joe Biden’s blood is probably the most green, Smolenyak says. His large Roman Catholic brood certainly fits the label. And the loquacious senator from Delaware has certainly been known to deliver the blarney.

At the top of the ticket, Barack Obama-(O’Bama, maybe?) has at least one Irish ancestor, according to genealogists. At age 19, Obama’s great-great-great grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, left Ireland in 1849 for America. And in a remarkable coincidence, Obama’s and Biden’s Irish ancestors arrived in the States within five weeks of each other, Smolenyak says. Both were shoemakers-and if the oratorical skills of their descendents is any guide, were presumably good salesmen as well.

On the GOP side, John McCain’s family has long claimed Scottish origin. There’s some debate about that, but Ancestry.com has found pretty definitive Irish roots. Senator McCain’s ancestor Alexander McKean, immigrated from Northern Ireland in the early 1700s, according to Smolenyak. It’s quite possible that the GOP candidate is of both Scottish and Irish origin.

Sarah Palin’s family tree also has a strong Irish branch. Her mother’s maiden name is Sheeran and her great-grandfather was born in Minnesota in 1876 to a first generation Irish-American couple.

America has long been fertile ground for refugees from the Emerald Isle. There are 40 million or so Americans who claim Irish heritage today, while Ireland itself has only 4 million people. Only German ancestry is reported by a larger group of Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Past American presidents who claimed a touch of Irish include Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and, of course, John F. Kennedy.

“Historically, oppressed people in America have sought the political system, and the Irish 100 years ago very much were an oppressed people,” says Jeffrey D. Cleary, executive director of the Irish American Republicans. That legacy led many Irish Americans to pursue politics, traditionally as a solid Democratic Party bloc. But that party loyalty fragmented as the group assimilated into society.

Still, politicians actively court Gaelic Americans. Just try watching a St. Patrick’s Day parade without seeing a politician amid the floats and marching bands. Hillary Clinton sported a shamrock scarf during the primaries, and McCain lobbied the community at a Pennsylvania campaign stop last month, when he pointed out that Irish-Americans are one of the few groups that it’s still safe to make jokes about-before launching into his own joke, which I’ll paraphrase here:

Two men sitting at a bar struck up a conversation and began to buy drinks for each other. As the evening progressed, the conversation got louder and more animated. One man asked his drinking buddy: “Where did you go to school?”

“St. Mary’s,” the second man replied.

“St. Mary’s?!  I went to St. Mary’s too.”

And on it went, with much backslapping, more drinks and wobbly bar stools.

Finally, another bar patron watching the growing commotion asked the bartender: “What’s going on down there?”

The bartender replied: “That’s just the O’Reilly twins getting drunk again.”

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the joke, Chris Longley, a businessman from St. Paul, Minn., plans to vote for McCain next month, but professes an admiration for the Democratic candidate. Obama’s heritage shows the “strength of the Irish gene in America,” Longley says. “You can be 10 percent Irish and it’s the strongest gene that you have and it overtakes all the rest of your genetic makeup. If Obama’s 5 percent Irish, in my mind, he’s 100 percent Irish.”
 

On the stump, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden likes to say that John McCain is disconnected from ordinary Americans. But lately it seems like Biden is the one who's "out of touch"--at least with his own campaign.

When Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate late last month, the punditocracy immediately predicted that the Delaware senator's predilection for saying stupid stuff at regular intervals--the term of art is "gaffe machine," I believe--would prove detrimental to his new boss's presidential bid. Until now, though, Biden's loose tongue hasn't been much of problem. It's not that he hasn't slipped up on occassion; he has, after all, admitted that Hillary Clinton "might have been a better [veep] pick" and asked the wheelchair-bound Missouri politician Chuck Graham to "stand up" at a rally. But so far, Biden's bloopers have been eclipsed by the planet-sized celebrity phenomenon known to us earthlings as Sarah Palin--a good thing for the body politic, given that most of his mistakes to date have been of the "totally irrelevant but typically distracting" variety.

Not anymore. In the past few days--just as Palinsanity has begun to die down--Biden has made a series of strange public statements that suggest he's either at odds with Obama on key policy issues or that he isn't aware of what Obama believes. Individually, they've served to cloud Obama's message on matters of substance; taken together, they suggest that someone in Chicago should give the guy a good talking to. If he or she can get a word in edgewise, that is.

Biden's string of slip-ups started last Monday. Asked by NBC's Meredith Viera whether the Fed should bail out insurance giant AIG, the senator said no: "I don't think they should be bailed out by the federal government." Unfortunately, the remark had more in common with McCain's initial position on the bailout (instinctive opposition) than Obama's carefully cultivated claim that he would not "second-guess" the government. When the bailout went through, both Biden and McCain bowed to reality. But the shift left Obama in a tricky position--as Matt Lauer pointed out this morning on "Today." Noting that Obama had been hitting McCain for flip-flopping on the AIG bailout, Lauer asked the Illinois senator how he could criticize his Republican rival when his own running mate had made the same mistake. His answer? "I think Joe should have waited as well." Awkward.

The past few days have been even worse. Speaking Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Biden not only acknowledged that the wealthy would pay higher taxes if if he and Obama won the White House, but said that doing so would be "patriotic." "It's time to be patriotic," he said. "Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut." Whether or not you agree with that sentiment, emphasizing that Obama would raise rates on rich folks (instead of saying that he'd lower them on the middle-classes) was clearly off-message--and the "patriotism" soundbite gave the GOP something catchy to hang its "distribution of wealth" hat on. Accompanied by a sarcastic ad, McCain's response was scathing: "Raising taxes in a tough economy isn't patriotic. It's not a badge of honor. It's just dumb policy." Expect to hear more on Biden's idea of patriotism before Nov. 4.

Incredibly, though, the senator seems to have saved the worst for last. Asked last night by Katie Couric on CBS Evening News Biden delivered what has to be most off-message statement yet: that one of his campaign's own ads--the spot released earlier this month mocking McCain for not being able to use a computer--was "terrible." "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it," he said. The campaign was soon forced to issue a less-than-convincing clarification in Biden's name. (Apparently he'd "never seen" the ad.") Meanwhile, video surfaced this morning of Biden telling a rope-line environmentalist in Ohio that he and Obama "are not supporting clean coal" in America--even though Obama, well, is. McCain quickly pounced, using Biden's error to pivot away from Wall Street and make the case that Democrats don't support comprehensive energy solutions; conference calls and ads are in the works. Biden may have opposed the technology in the primaries--he's on record as saying "clean-coal... is not the route to go in the United States"--but he should probably brush up on his briefing books (or pay attention to his own speeches) now that his boss disagrees. 

Don't get me wrong. I think that the GOP should take a page from Chicago's book and stop sequestering Palin from the press and the public as if she were a show pony instead of a potential vice president. And I hate that "gaffes"--often little more than trivialities--tend to dominate the political conversation in this country. But Biden's latest spree is more than an irrelevant testament to his uncontrollable verbosity. It's actually making Obama's message on substantive matters like taxes, energy, AIG and McCain more difficult to hear. In an election, that hurts the candidate more than anyone else. But what happens if Obama and Biden are elected? Having a vice-president who's eager to hold forth on any subject--even when what he's saying bears no relation to administration policy--could get pretty complicated. Distracting a campaign is one thing. Distracting a president, a political party and, by extension, the country? Awkward doesn't quite cover it.

In the primaries, the senator showed an admirable sense of self-conscious restraint. Asked during the first Democratic debate whether he'd have the "discipline" he'd "need on the world stage," Biden delivered the perfect answer: "Yes." Nothing more, nothing less.

Obama might want to remind him of that exchange the next time they talk.