Palin-drone

I can't pin down all my reactions to Palin, though I know for sure that I find her repellent.

She's a phony baloney populist who starts to droppin' the g's and floggin' the folksiness in order to drop a scrim of wholesome American archetypes over her flashes of High School Mean Girl.

Then there are the times she resembles nothing so much as a Disney animatronic candidate, grinning through a mechanical recitation of stock phrases, talking points, jibes and suckups.

There are occasional glitches in her programming that pop up when the questions do not compute. Then she whirs and spins and garbles her Magic 8-Ball answers into a completely incoherent vomitus of gosh-darn-it's, mavericks, you-betcha's, rears-its-head's, greed-and-corruption-on-Wall-Street's, taxes-taxes-taxes, and Main-Streeters-like-me's.

Finally there are the glimpses of a shrewd, calculating and nasty woman who has no doubts about herself, her ambitions or her rightful place at the pinnacle of American political power.

It wasn't all that surprising that she would exceed the lowest debate performance expectations in recent memory. Her slightly bobble-headed grin of faux cheer wooed  the Repug base anew and might have won her a few new fans among the easily impressed. For those who are looking for something more than a drinking buddy in their candidates for high office, her hockey-mom/joe-six-pack persona is an embarrassment.

Her gaffes were the kind that would rally the Repug base and the hell with logic or truth. One was Palin's novel reading of the Constitution to include a vague expansiveness of vice presidential power over the Senate. That might thrill Cheney fans watching from their coffins of native soil, but several cable-news commentators, particularly Chris Matthews, were agape. He was also horror-struck at her suggestion to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

More serious were, I think, her snide jibes. I watched the debate on CNN and the focus group meters were consistent in recording audience disapproval of negativity or attacks. I think I also detected deflating scores every time she wandered in the thickets of repetitive Repug bromides rather than answer a simple question.

The best reaction of the night came from Howard Fineman, on with Olbermann after the debate:

"My dominent impression stylistically was of a wolverine attacking the pant-leg of a passerby. I mean, she got ahold of Joe Biden and hung on for dear life, using every attack line she conceivably could ... It was attack, attack, attack, resort to Alaska when necessary, not listen to the questions or answer them when necessary, all to get through the ninety minutes by attacking...."

Hee! Fineman starts at about 5:15 into the video: