This from CNN:

“A national poll of people who watched the vice presidential debate Thursday night suggests that Democratic Sen. Joe Biden won, but also says Republican Gov. Sarah Palin exceeded expectations.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. said 51 percent of those polled thought Biden did the best job, while 36 percent thought Palin did the best job.

But respondents said the folksy Palin was more likable, scoring 54 percent to Biden’s 36 percent. Seventy percent said Biden was more of a typical politician.

Both candidates exceeded expectations — 84 percent of the people polled said Palin did a better job than they expected, while 64 percent said Biden also exceeded expectations.

How Palin would perform had been a major issue for the Alaska governor, who had some well-publicized fumbles during interviews with CBS’ Katie Couric leading up to the debate.”

I don’t think those results would shock anyone; those results were pretty evident after watching 10 minutes of the debate.  I must tell the truth, I only watched about 10 minutes because it was kind of boring to me.  I think it was mainly boring because we didn’t get what many people expected: Palin didn’t self-destruct before our eyes.

The McCain camp was trying to get two victories, knowing one out of two wouldn’t be half bad.  The first victory was to keep Palin from embarrassing herself and the Republican party.  It wasn’t a slam-dunk, but mission accomplished.  The second victory at stake, of course, was the debate itself.  She may not have won it, but she wasn’t blown out and that is good enough.  The baton has been passed back to McCain and he will take it from here.

Let your imagination run wild or look at the obvious issues surrounding both presidential hopefuls and you should be able to see that the vice-presidential candidates are more important that ever before.  Ask yourself, who do you honestly think is more prepared to run the country if something were to happen to the president.

Is is Palin or is it Biden?

The polls are in and both presidential candidates seem fit to run the country.  If whatever data was used to come to this conclusion proves to be accurate, thank goodness!  Both candidates seemed to do a pretty good job overall, but the news is so slanted and there are some things to note.

• There is an article on CNN titled “Round 1 In Debate Goes To Obama, Poll Says.”  This is all well and good until the article mentions the fact that most of the people polled were Democrats and even then Obama only have 51% of the vote.  I would actually think someone at CNN would look at this and not even bother to report it.
• At this point I think both candidates are coming at us from two different angles.  One is harsh, somewhat aggressive and I think bitter at times.  These actions, during the debate, follow how his campaign has been ran up to this point.  Basically, politics that lean towards the ugly side.  The other candidate seems to be smooth, even if some of his answers may be light.  He is the one who draws people in with his delivery and charisma.  The only question is, how is this going to play for the next four years?  Some may debate it, but we’ve had nearly 8 years of someone looking directly at the camera and blowing smoke.  Do we really want and/or need that anymore?
• I think it should be noted that Obama didn’t really want to mix it up directly with McCain.  I’m not sure of the gentleman’s name or title who ran the debate, but he sure was egging them on wasn’t he?  He wanted them to talk directly to each other and it just wasn’t happening like that.  Maybe things will heat up later, but last night seemed to be pretty civil.
• Are the vice-presidential debates going to be more information or entertainment?  I think plenty of people will be in front of the TV with popcorn ready.  Someone sure does have their work cut out for them preparing one of the vice-presidential candidates.  I’m not naming names, but you know exactly who I’m talking about here.

I think we have two candidates with different approaches and for this reason I don’t think there was a clear-cut winner.  Somebody tell me, does winning these debates really have that much of an impact on who is ultimately elected?