Last night JBtakenote told us in his recced diary How Sarah Palin Lost the Debate. He wrote about losing his triplets, of the pain of a parent losing his/her children.
And then he says
Now, I'm not telling all of you this to engender sympathy. As I mentioned, I now have a wonderful, full life with an incredible wife and beautiful children. I'm bringing this up, because of what that experience was - and how horrendous it was that Sarah You-Betcha ignored it.
Now I didn't see the moment as it happened. I was in this room venting on dailykos about how much I can't stand Winky Sarah. I couldn't wait, my outrage meter was full.
So I waited here for the video to be posted and read the comments.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing, a person so coached and so stiff that she couldn't step out of the character of "candidate" and be compassionate human being. If she had had a real moment right there, last night, it is my belief she would have won the debate.
I did not know the story of Joe Biden, in 1972 I was 10 years old. So I jetted over to wikipedia to read more about Joe.
A few weeks after the election, Biden's wife and year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware on December 18, 1972.[2] (Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing.)[21] Biden's two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured in the accident, but both eventually made full recoveries.[2] Biden considered resigning in order to care for them;[5] persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield; he was sworn into office from one of their bedsides.[22] The accident left Biden filled with both anger and religious doubt: "I liked to [walk around seedy neighborhoods] at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight ... I had not known I was capable of such rage ... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me."[22]
Maybe I can be forgiven for not knowing Joe's back story. There is alot of information and interests out there, no one can know everything. But I can tell you the names of the last 10 magazines, newspapers, web media, and books I have read. I could probably write down 10 titles in each media category for just this past year. And I have dyslexia and read slowly.
I am not, by nature, incurious.
I am also not a candidate for the office of Vice President of the United States.
The Republican meme has been, as long as I can remember (despite evidence to the contrary), that liberals and now intellectuals are too naive to give opinions on the economy, the war, the Constitution, etc.
To save time I'll just concede the point that right now, that my right wing, O'Reilly loving, next door neighbor, who has no more ambition than a high school diploma, never reads and who has never been outside the country is far more qualified than I am to render opinions or contribute any meaningful ideas no matter how good and sound to the national conversation. (/snark)
But I am going to throw one out anyway, and that is that is it important to "know your enemy."
It's an ancient concept written about by Sun Tzu (500 BCE), in a military treatise studied at all our military universities. This idea is not only applied to war, but in business toward ones competition and on the debate floor during presidential elections.
The exact quote:
"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."
While I may not have known Joe Biden's back story, Sarah Palin surely did. We have focused on how classless and cruel it was for her not to show some empathy for Joe when he told this story, but I believe it was something else entirely.
Jane Hamsher at Firegodlake points out that not only did Sarah dismiss Joe Biden's second wife as just a school teacher (she's a college professor), but he also said that there is a reward in Heaven for her. This to a man who his first wife to a car accident, and you can see his face fall after she says that. He knows what she did.
Given what we have witness in this campaign we can safelty conclude that many Sun Tzu strategies are often used. Also that there is not much, if anything, out of bounds. We also know that John McCain, Karl Rove and the Republicans want to knock Obama/Biden off their game.
I believe that her your "wife in Heaven" remark was a subtle attempt to do just that. It was said to knock Joe off his game for the evening.
What Sarah got back, she was unprepared for and it spoke volumes about her (all bad). It also said much about Biden. If I drank, I'd rather have a beer with him, heck, I'd even buy the beer.