you spin me right round, baby, right round

It's dangerous to gloat, or even remain steadfastly optimistic about political successes in turbulent America, but Joe Biden did a good job tonight in his debate with Sarah Palin. Granted, he's about 700 billion times smarter and more experienced than Palin, who clearly kept returning to memorized lines about mavericks, Alaskan energy policy, and the imaginary tax burden that Obama is planning for the middle class. She even admitted that she wasn't going to answer the questions she was asked, which I found extraordinary. Also of note were her cheerful pronouncement that she only had 5 weeks of experience in national politics, and her repetition of the word "maverick" whenever she couldn't answer a question with "In Alaska..."

But I want to break this down a bit. Here are my highlights from tonight's debate:

1. This one time, at band camp?

We know that Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla and is governor of Alaska. We know that she's a real maverick who fought big business interests with a Washington outsider's tough as nails approach. We know that she endorses off-shore drilling, and is skeptical about global warming. But these statements, no matter how often they are uttered, are not appropriate answers to questions on foreign policy and health care. She is not running for Vice-President of the United States of Alaska. Also, repeating ideas does not make them true.

2. I don't hear you...

It amazes me that after both Obama's and Biden's logical repudiations of how McCain and Palin are spinning their tax proposal, the republicans continue to insist that Obama wants to tax the middle class. In reality, Obama's policy taxes people who make over $250,000 per year. McCain's tax policy primarily benefits corporations by cutting the business tax and creating new middle class taxes, such as the proposed tax on employee health insurance. McCain's fiscal policies are not dissimilar to Bush's. Both men have been career advocates of deregulation, military spending, and privatizing social security and health care--programs that other first-world countries consider basic human rights. Despite her Joe 6-Pack act, Palin also has a history of raising taxes on the middle-class. This isn't to berate her windfall policy on oil taxes, because that seems (as far as I can tell, and this is new territory for me) okay. But a tax hike is just that, regardless of its beneficiaries. So, despite the transparency of their lies and hypocrisy, McCain and Palin keep misrepresenting the democratic tax proposal. Biden was really clear and factual in tonight's rebuttal of this nonsense, but I worry that the American collective psychology is resistant to logic.

3. Joe Six-Pack

Let's just cut the crap. No one in this campaign--Obama, Biden, McCain, Palin--are suffering with the middle class. If any of them are drinking Coors Lights, it's because they have bad taste in beer.

4. The sky is falling!

This highlight is tangentially related to the debate, but it counts. If you've been paying any attention to media sources over the past few days, you'll have noticed an unsettling phenomenon. Banks are floundering. Stocks are down. The government is considering a really poorly conceived bail-out plan. These events are not what's unsettling me, though of course such economic upheaval is disconcerting. No, what's unsettling is that the media tells people to panic, so they do. Last week, Americans convinced their lawmakers in the House that Paulson's and Bernanke's bail-out plan is, to be nice, not very intelligent. Washington was floored by failure (you'd think they'd be used to it by now) and responded by saying, "But you're panicking, remember? You're really scared right now! Your mortgage, and your small business, and your 401K, and your little piece of the American free market dream! It's time to freak out, people!" So what do Americans do? They panic! They call into NPR and make asinine comments about how a bad plan is better than no plan at all. I suppose this is a corollary to the logic that attacking Saddam Hussein is better than not catching Osama bin Laden.

I'm reading Slaughterhouse 5 right now for the first time, and am struck by the narrator's apathy for political and emotional disaster. Death is always followed by "and so it goes," and unusual events by "and so on." I know that this is an ironic gesture by Vonnegaut, that beneath the casual prose is an ardent attack on war and America's master of the universe teleology. But is unsettles me nevertheless, because I suspect that that is how we live our lives.

The bail out plan passed Senate today. And so on.