Judging Palin by an Eighth-Grade Standard

There is only one way to understand the rave reviews that some are giving Sarah Palin’s speech: People expected her to be a blithering fool and were shocked that she could read a decent speech prepared for her by the McCain campaign. She is being judged by much too low a standard.

I always thought she would speak reasonably well; there are plenty of tapes floating around showing she can do that. She was, after all, elected governor.

But if Palin is judged by the standard that should be applied to someone in line to be president of the United States, she didn't blow many people away -- other than Republican loyalists and the pundits she hates so much.

If, going in, you were inclined to support her, she did just fine. (That was the reaction among the delegates.) She also pulled over anyone who wanted to support her going in.

But if you think, as I do, that she needed to bowl people over to show that she really is up to the job, to brush aside the questions, well, she didn’t do that. If you were worried that she has absolutely no background in foreign policy, she did nothing to relieve those worries.

All the speeches about her (and her own speech) carried the subtext that a lot of people out there don’t think she belongs on the ticket. She therefore needed to defend herself, and other speakers needed to defend her. There was way too much self-defense before she got to John McCain. I just don’t think that speech changed a lot of minds, and I am surprised that so many pundits gushed over it.

I also suspect that the harshness of parts of her speech turned off moderate independents, especially women who tend not to like attack campaigning. On that, the polls will tell.

At least a couple of focus group reports that Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo unearthed suggest that the speech did not overwhelm rank-and-file voters. (Update: After I wrote this a couple of hours ago, I ran across a SurveyUSA poll that points the other way. It found that 57 percent of independents gave Palin's speech a grade of A. Many more saw her as an asset to McCain after the speech than did before.) I have no idea if these focus groups are representative of broader opinion, but they do contrast with some of the more extravagant claims made on behalf of her speech.

On a related note, I like Mike Kinsley’s point: It’s odd for candidates to say that their families are off-limits except when they are not.