What you didn’t see at home
About a half hour before the debate started, the audience that filled WashU’s athletic complex had to be in their seats. A number of speakers that you didn’t see at home addressed the crowd.
First, a Commission on Presidential Debates official asked the audience not to clap during the debate. But he couldn’t stop them, obviously, from laughing or groaning.
“This is not about us,” he told the audience.
Then WashU Chancellor Mark Wrighton took the stage. He couldn’t help but point out that a national championship men’s basketball team usually plays where everyone was sitting. He also took the opportunity to brag about some of the university’s projects.
Then perhaps one of the more memorable moments was when two WashU football players helped moderator Gwen Ifill to the stage, as I blogged about earlier. Ifill, of course, broke her ankle earlier this week. The two students — Buck Smith and Tim Taylor — each held on to one of her arms as she gingerly walked/limped to her desk.
“Thanks to TIm and Buck,” Ifill said to the audience once she reached her seat. “They’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a couple of weeks.”
Then Ifill added as an aside about her injury that she fell — and wasn’t pushed.
Then there were a couple of minutes of silence before the Biden and Palin took the stage. Some of those in the balcony whose backs were already hurting from sitting on the bleachers stood up to stretch.
Then the two candidates took the stage. And the audience cheered and came to its feet.
Kavita Kumar covers higher education for the Post-Dispatch. 
I am not “Joe sixpack” or “a hockey mom”…Palin would make a great school board member, a Parent Organization president or city council member…how in the heck she became a Governor is beyond me!
I’d like to ask Todd Palin how he can ignore a summons to testify??? I bet he is hoping and praying she wins or his next months could be in jail.
Here is one issue where Sarah and I are different…if you or I would ignore a summons, we’d end up in jail so fast our heads would spin. Her family can AFFORD to be above the law. Not very “Main Street” nor very “anti Washington” to me! is it?
Comment at PD staffers grossly biased and off color messages using twitter was removed from this blog. Are you really trying to have a conversation about the debate with us? Or censor it when we criticize and point out things we don’t like in your coverage?
gabehartwig: #pddebate #vpdebate Hearing Palin talk about being mayor is like listening to people talk about working for their college newspaper. Stfu.
telling her to shut the f**K up isn’t professional….at all.
If anyone thinks she’s a “maverick” or a Washington outsider, just look at her answer to the question of whether Cheney is right by expanding the power of the VP. Biden is absolutely correct that Cheney is the money dangerous VP in the history of the United States. And Palin, perhaps the most unqualified in the history of the US to run for the office, wants to keep (or expand!) that power? Ridiculous.
Christine and Tom are right on the money here. Palin is a fine person, she can hold whichever backwards personal beliefs she chooses, but to say she’s ready to LEAD OUR NATION OUT OF THIS WAR AND THIS ECONOMIC DISASTER? That’s the stuff of Orwell novels. Let’s all open our eyes and get a clue. The President of the U.S. is not SUPPOSED to be “joe six pack”—remember, hockey moms are pitbulls with lipstick.
Do we really want a vicious animal, loyal to her Republican masters (maverick? phht! reformer? hello! troopergate = plame leak, same idea, hello! abuse of power, anyone? cheney in a skirt!)
telling Putin where to stick his rearing head? Or letting Kissinger and other used up chauvinists grope her during a photo op? A Puritanical power tripper who, like Bush, does not read intelligent news sources (or so she led us to believe with her non-answer) and who believes Cheney’s power grab and illegal activities as VP were a good thing that she would expand upon? COME ON, PEOPLE.
McCain/Palin = Party that Wrecked America. Say it loud. Say it over and over again until people wake up and remember the lies Bush told and the lives he’s cost the world.