A DC Day & Debate

Sorry about no blog yesterday but it was a hectic and super political day. My journal had its symposium on energy law all day, which I had to sneak out of to help run an economic crisis panel we organized for 1Ls and then go to two classes. I came home to bake and ended the day hosting a mini-debate watching party. *collapses*

Even though it was a busy day, it was an enjoyable busy--especially watching the VP debate. I thought Biden did well and Palin . . . well, she did not crash and burn as many Dems thought (and hoped) she would. I think this flow chart is a great representation of her strategy to answering questions to avoid a repeat of her Couric-interview performance:

To give the McCain campaign a little credit, this would be the same strategy I would use to avoid disaster. In fact, it is pretty similar to how we trained candidates to answer questions during our student government endorsement hearings. Repeat question, compliment the student group asking the question, provide a way we relate, and if we have not successfully wasted away all of the time, try to answer the question. If we did not like the question or know the answer, we answered the question we wanted to get.

The difference between us and Palin, however, is that we only used this strategy when we got unfair questions from an opposing student groups [ie: who is your favorite lesbian author of color, true question Alex got]. None of the questions last night were unfair or out of the blue. We didn't wink, use horrible terms like Joe Sixpack, and oh yeah, we were running for student government positions and Sarah Palin is running for Vice President of the United States.