Tonight was the big debate between vice presidential candidates Joe Biden (D) and Sarah Palin (R). Expectations were low for Palin because she’s looked pretty bad in recent television interviews — especially the one with Katie Couric. That worked to her benefit; she only had to do okay for her performance to be perceived as successful.

And Palin did, in fact, do okay. She stuck to her talking points. She dodged some questions. At times, she had some good, substantive responses. At other times, she tried to make up for lack of substance with excessive colloquial language (although, in fairness, some say that’s “Sarah being Sarah”). Most of the time, her answers sounded rehearsed, and she repeated a lot of stump-speech lines that are, frankly, getting moldy. But, she held her own and didn’t implode. And she got better as the debate progressed. Well done.

Joe Biden was expected to do well in this debate, and he did. He has had lots of experience debating in the U. S. Senate, and it showed. He looked confident and comfortable. His answers were substantive and he had a lot of good sound bites I’m sure we’ll be hearing in the news the next several days. He connected with the viewer. He showed emotion, such as when he talked about knowing what it’s like to be a single parent. You felt, as a viewer, like what he said was genuine. Not that he did everything right, but he came across very polished and at ease. He certainly reiterated a lot of talking points as well.

Now, I’m writing this while watching the post-debate punditry, and they appear to all be giving Palin much better marks than I just did. Perhaps I’m still tainted by the horrible showing she had in those CBS interviews. Or maybe I just hadn’t lowered my expectations as much as everyone else had, so I’m a little more disappointed.

I think the bottom line is, she did no harm tonight. I don’t think this debate changed anything in the campaign — i.e., it didn’t help or hurt it. It won’t give the Republicans or the Democrats a bounce, but will likely just reinforce voters’ feelings. And I guess that makes it a success.