Candidates, Take Your Corners

In case you somehow managed to miss the banner headlines and television teasers, the Vice Presidential candidates will face off tonight. That’s right - Sarah Palin and Joe Biden will share their vision for the future even as they publicly rip each other to shreds. I love the debates.

Don’t know where to watch this much-touted, long-anticipated event? Every major network, PBS, C-SPAN, CNN, FOX News and MSNBC will all be showing the coverage live - just start flipping channels and you’re bound to find it.

They’ll meet up at Washington University in St. Louis and square off on the important issues affecting the country….or, they’ll just both spit rhetoric and remain carefully ambiguous on all swing voter issues. No need to alienate all the maybes out there. Palin has been preparing for the debate at McCain’s Arizona retreat, while Biden has been at work in his Delaware home.

With the Vice Presidential debates just around the corner, comedians have been having a field day. Letterman delivered a “Things Overheard at Sarah Palin’s Debate Camp” Top 10 list last night. The Number 1 spot was given to the remark “Any way we can just get Tina Fey to do it?” Hey, the debates are appearing on NBC!

Many are calling this particular debate historic, and in some ways that’s true. This year’s election has been more ground-breaking, more press-involved and more circus-like than any election season which has come before. But it is not the first time a woman has been on a Vice Presidential ticket.

The democrats did that twenty years ago. Geraldine Ferraro ran with Walter Mondale in 1984 (soundly beaten in a landslide by the Reagan-Bush ticket). Ferraro debated George H. W. Bush on October 11, 1984 (PBS offers the transcript if you’re interested).