That was a battle of wits I would have loved to see. Both are a little lacking in brain matter.
Palin actually wasn't the trainwreck that most (including the McCain campaign) thought she'd be. I watched it live and thought she did OK. But when I went back and watched it after reading some critiques, it became clear that she'd rehearsed some canned responses and didn't really answer the questions being asked. At one point, she even said she wasn't going to answer the questions the way people might want/expect her to.
From what I can recall, her only major fuckup was that she didn't know the duties of the Vice President. She seemed to believe (apparently based on something she got from Cheney) that as VP, she'd be some sort of Super Senator. She'd go down to the Senate and do some of this and some of that, and
get them all straightened out.
From the 60 Minutes interview the other night, that included Steve Schmidt, Sarah's lack of basic knowledge on civics, foreign policy and history (WWI, WWII, the Korean War - didn't understand why there was a North Korea and a South Korea, etc.) was rather shocking. The interview is probably on Youtube by now. But to paraphrase what was said, the number of things that she didn't know, that she
should have known, was rather incredible. They didn't expect that any governor would know everything. But they figured that anyone who had been in government for any period of time should know the basics... and she didn't.
I do give Schmidt some credit for manning up and admitting that he was the one who pushed her on McCain. Though he did back off on his role in influencing McCain to actually select her, while they knew nothing at all about her. Other than a basic background check, Sarah was a completely unknown quantity, according to Schmidt. A pig in a poke, as it were. Or better yet, a poodle (calling itself a pitbull) in a poke. :1orglaugh