I didn’t go into the debate thinking Sarah Palin was either (1) the august Saint Jane of Sixpack, whose Middle-American horse sense is worth ten times its weight in Yale degrees and who has the stuff to remake Washington completely while one hand dandles a baby and the other cleans a rifle or (2) the dumbest religious-rightest bitch ever nominated for anything ever who can’t even make sentences and OMG have you seen those glasses and what does she think this is a Pantene commercial and that Valley-Girl-from-the-North-Country accent gives me hives and AAARRRGGGGGGHHHH?!

I like Palin. I think she’s shrewd and grounded. I like that she loves her country without qualification. I have the same problems with her that I do with all politicians: I wish she weren’t an economics moron, and I wish her political compromises indicated a more consistent way of prioritizing principles and goods. And there are some more specific problems with her individually: shrewdness and cockiness are not substitutes for being informed, and there is, in fact, nothing elitist about deploying good grammar/usage/mechanics off the cuff. I was never persuaded that Palin was lacking in intelligence, but I’m still not persuaded that she has the hunger for knowledge or conceptual framework for driving policy effectively.

That said, she did well last night. She appeared to believe what she was saying, and there were few “How’s that again?” sentence constructions. Biden’s been around for ages, so I have a difficult time assessing what the debate itself really made me think of him. He seemed more lizardly than usual, though he never acted like a jerk.

Like Virginia, I like Will Wilkinson’s liveblog. Some excerpts:

8:16 – Biden: Barack Obama will never raise taxes on anyone ever. Almost. McCain is middle-class-hating shill for megawealthy.

8:18 – Palin: Higher taxes not patriotic, Biden. Government off our snow machines! I did a good job remembering talking points about McCain’s health care tax credit plan! Budget-neutral: I can say it!

8:19 – Biden: Scranton, reprezent. Redistribution isn’t if you don’t call it that. Fairness! Health care, blah blah Bridge to Nowhere.

8:21 – Biden: How to save? Screw foreign assistance, tax cuts for rich, can’t “slow up on” stuff that’s the “engine”, like subsidies for the energy companies we’re not going to give tax cuts to. Tax havens unpatriotic!

…

8:31 – Palin: Extemp grammar weird. Global warming. Yeah, we’ve got glaciers in Alaska, so we need to pay more for energy by subsidizing the same energy companies I had to wrestle like polar bears.

8:32 – Biden: Global warming totally manmade. I know. I made it. By Talking. BO likes clean coal and safe nuclear. China: Dirty dirty coal. Give em our tech. McCain hates environment because he opposes causing hunger in third world children by subsidizing corn. Drilling won’t get us anywhere until 10 years, as if prices don’t reflect expectations of future production.

My biggest worry last night was that if Palin crashed and burned, she would not only discredit the McCain campaign but also the idea that bringing outsiders (“non-professionals”) into DC politics is a good one. She held her own and seems to be learning her lessons. That’s not major praise, but considering whom she’s running with and against, and considering her own very, very iffy performance over the last several weeks, it’s enough.