palin did a very credible job. She was very well coached, and memorizing her closing statement was a killer. She's very good at looking directly at the camera. However, in at least three occassions, she completely ignored the question and just launched into her talking points, which (a) on one hand was a good strategy, and she did it without fumbling around, which made it hard to remember what the actual question was, and (b) annoyed the hell out of me.
she also clearly wasn't listening at all to what biden was saying (looking happily into the camera while he was breaking down, talking about his family and losing a child); she had the most trouble in her follow-up comments, which often had nothing to do with what biden had been talking about ("let me return to taxes").
She has the ability to talk about anything and give the impression that she knows what she is talking about. I'm not belittling that; it is a great skill to have.
I thought biden did a fine job as well. He did a good job at kind of ignoring her, and talking about mccain and his policies, and trying to differentiate the democratic ticket. He got out his talking points and didn't show disrespect to his opponent.
