Free Advice for Joe Biden

Joe Biden will be walking the tightrope tonight. He'll want to convey his knowledge, without coming across as patronizing and condescending to his opponent.

One strategy will be for him to focus on McCain rather than Sarah Palin. This is what Michael Westmoreland-White suggests in Race and the U.S. Presidential Elections.

This might work. Of course, he'll need a strategy if Gwen Ifill explicitly asks him what he thinks of Palin.

I think one thing Biden can do is use "I" sentences. I'm not gay, but when I attended a gay Bible study at DePauw University, the group emphasized using "I" sentences. They're less antagonistic. Which would you be more open to? "You're wrong!" and "This is the way it is" and "You've got to understand that..."? Or "From my experience, I think that..." My therapist also said that "I" statements are more personable, since who can argue with someone's experience?

And Biden should not be afraid to say "I disagree with Governor Palin." He won't want to do so in a haughty, "Al Gore 2000 debate I" tone, nor in a soft, gentle "Al Gore 2000 debate II" tone. He'll just want to say in a flat tone that he disagrees with Governor Palin, then explain why. It's not condescending or bullying to say that one disagrees with someone else. It's actually treating someone else as an equal, since equals disagree all of the time.

I intended to write this to give Joe Biden some free advice, but I think it may work for Governor Palin too. I'm sure Governor Palin has spent a few days cramming facts and figures and statistics. That's all right, to a certain extent, but I'm worried she'll come across like Reagan in the first Reagan-Mondale debate: babbling a bunch of statistics without much coherence. One thing she can do is speak from her experience: talk about how health care and taxes and the financial crisis and the sanctity of life have affected her family. When the topic is foreign policy, she should talk about her interaction with foreign officials. After all, she dealt with Canada to plan that natural gas pipeline. That's relevant experience!

Of course, I don't know what she should do if she's asked "pop quiz" questions, like "What Supreme Court decision do you oppose?" or "What do you like and dislike about Dick Cheney's acts as Vice-President?" That's where some cramming may help. Or she may be able to get by with banal generalities, mixed with a few specifics here and there. That's what Bush II did in his debates, and he won both elections!