Sarah Palin: A Bridge Too Far
By Bob Beckel
Fox News Senior Political Analyst

Have we reached the point of mediocrity in this country that Sarah
Palin's debate performance was actually acceptable to her supporters
(fortunately, Independents in early polls do not share that view)
because she didn't fall on her face, as many conservatives feared?
That's your standard? No wonder there are still some of you who still
think George Bush, the very definition of mediocrity, is a good president.

In a word, Palin's debate performance was awful. She couldn't win a high
school student council election with those homespun platitudes,
repetitive inane comments about the war, and most strikingly her refusal
to answer not a few but EVERY question put to her that demanded a direct
answer.

Every economic question received the tired tax-and-spend slogans
Republicans have bellowed for years.

Foreign policy: "You were wrong on the surge." -- That was it. Not one
single idea of her own (which is understandable, since she has none).
What would you do different in bad economic times like this? "Cut more
taxes in Walissa." The great foreign policy team around McCain-Palin
includes Rudy Giuliani, who has about as much foreign policy experience
as Madonna, and who history will record mishandled 9/11 in tragic ways.

Palin's next foreign policy guru? Mitt Romney. -- The same stiff-haired
flip-flopper whose entire foreign policy experience was pedaling his
bike trying to convert Mormons in France. Or Henry Kissinger, who ran
illegal wars in Laos and Cambodia to get Richard Nixon re-elected and
lied when he told Americans before the 1972 election that, "Peace is at
hand" in Vietnam. I suppose if your worldview is seeing Russia from an
island in Alaska, and having a border with our threatening neighbor,
Canada, you love these guys.

The Economic Crisis: When asked about the current economic crisis, she
says nothing because she knows nothing. But she sure talked about her
family breakfast table a lot. That's the table the citizens of Alaska
paid per diem for her to sit at for over 300 days as governor. She says
electing her and McCain is electing two mavericks who will cut spending,
including earmarks. Palin has asked for, and gotten, $1 million every
day in pork for Alaska since she's been governor.

Palin says she and McCain will appoint the most qualified people to
government despite party labels. Sort of like your second grade friend
you put in charge of Alaska's agriculture because "she loved cows as a
little girl," Sarah?

A word for Moderator Gwen Ifill: The right intimidated you. You never
forced Palin to answer a question directly and not duck; you bent over
backward to take her sophomoric answers seriously; and frankly you
treated her with girlie gloves.

But that's not the point. Even with your softball questions she couldn't
get past "aw shucks," "hockey moms" and "Wasilla values" (which get
weirder and weirder).

If the stakes weren't so high, this obviously nice and fairly articulate
person can probably still govern the state of Alaska, where frankly it
doesn't much matter. But vice president of the United States? That is a
bridge not only too far, but the real bridge to nowhere.