VP debate holds risk, promise
— -- The stakes are sky-high for Sarah Palin — not to mention Republican presidential candidate John McCain — as she debates Democrat Joe Biden Thursday night amid falling poll numbers and growing voter skepticism.
The Republican governor of Alaska faces off against the Democratic senator from Delaware in the most-anticipated vice presidential debate ever as surveys showed Barack Obama and Biden in a strengthening position for the Nov. 4 election.
The powerful boost McCain got from choosing Palin as his running mate is fading fast, and they looked to the debate at Washington University in St. Louis as a chance to restore some of that luster.
The McCain camp made a critical move before the debate Wednesday, announcing that it was pulling staff and advertising out of the economically distressed state of Michigan.
One McCain adviser said it was "off the list." The GOP nominee also canceled a visit slated for next week. Michigan, with 17 electoral votes, voted for Democrat John Kerry in 2004, but Republicans had poured money into an effort to try to place it in their column this year.
The move signals a major retreat as McCain struggles to regain his footing in a campaign increasingly dominated by economic issues.
McCain mentioned the night's debate as he took the stage for a town hall meeting with several hundred women voters in Denver and was rewarded with a standing ovation and loud cheers.
"I know she'd be pleased at that incredible response, that frankly she's inspired all over this country," he said.
However, Palin is coming off a series of television interviews in which she has sometimes seemed to struggle.
The Obama campaign was eager to increase expectations for Palin, hoping they would then be dashed.
"She's an extremely good debater," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters aboard Biden's plane Thursday afternoon. "We expect that she'll have very witty, biting lines that she'll get off tonight."
While Palin is under pressure to present herself as an agile performer, Biden, too, must avoid the kind of extemporaneous remarks that have landed him in trouble before.
The high stakes have also cast the spotlight on the debate's moderator, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill. Some conservatives have criticized the Presidential Debates Commission's selection of Ifill because she is writing a book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." The book is about how politics among blacks have changed since the civil rights era. She has said she has yet to write the chapter on Obama and has questioned why people think it will be favorable toward the Democrat.
"Frankly, I wish they had picked a moderator that isn't writing a book favorable to Barack Obama," McCain told Fox News on Thursday. "But I have to have confidence that Gwen Ifill will treat this as a professional journalist that she is."
Plouffe, dismissed the complaints as "another in a long line of manufactured controversies."
The challenge on debate night
The vice presidential candidates have to show they could step into the top job if needed. They must excite the party faithful and entice undecided voters. And they must mind the vice presidential credo: "Do no harm" to the nominee, all while sinking their teeth into the opponent.
Palin and Biden each come with their own specific challenges. Since being chosen by GOP nominee John McCain on Aug. 29, the Alaska governor has inspired excitement within the party — especially among conservatives wary of McCain's work with Democrats on immigration and an overhaul of campaign-finance laws. But no one outside of Alaska has seen Palin debate live, and her recent network TV interviews — in which she struggled to answer questions about the government's financial bailout plan and her self-described expertise on Russia — have been widely lampooned.
