VP debate unusually important

Inter Lake editorial

The most interesting political campaign in the past 40 years will get even more interesting tonight when Sarah Palin takes up the gauntlet for John McCain and spars with Joe Biden at the sole vice-presidential debate scheduled before the Nov. 4 election.

Gov. Palin's meteoric rise to popularity after her surprise pick as McCain's running mate on the Republican ticket has been followed by a shaking-out period in which the national media has tried to cut her down to size - one-term governor of Alaska, two-term mayor of Wasilla.

Whether that qualifies her to be vice president, of course, is not up to the media, but the voters, and so tonight she will bring her case directly to the public. Sen. Joe Biden, despite 36 years in the Senate, is playing second fiddle, and he knows it. Indeed, his many years of political experience could well lead him to take a cautious approach to the debate, and one of the great questions is whether he will be seen as condescending to his less-experienced rival, or deferential. Clearly, something in the middle would play best, but we won't know how it goes until the two candidates are on stage together.

McCain and his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, held the first of their own three debates last Friday night, and though there was some drama leading up to the debate (would it be held or not?), the event itself was somewhat disappointing. McCain clearly didn't want to engage Obama, and Obama was perhaps a bit too deferential to McCain in all but a few instances.

Chances are, tonight's debate will be more lively than that one, even though the rules are more restrictive. And though vice presidential candidates aren't supposed to matter, they clearly do in this case. If either Biden or Palin makes a huge gaffe or slips on a banana peel, this election could slip out of reach for their running mates.

Oh yeah, and if that wasn't interesting enough, it turns out that the moderator of the debate tonight is herself making a bit of news. Turns out that Gwen Ifill of PBS has a book coming out on inauguration day in January that is about "Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." Sounds like a conflict of interest to us, but with so many interesting developments in Campaign 2008, this will probably turn out to be just a minor one.