If you had told me a week and a half ago that I would have nothing to say about the presidential debate at Ole Miss and would end up writing a semi-political post to my blog about the Vice Presidential election I would have been disappointed and probably wouldn’t have believed you. However, before we begin with the meat of this discussion let me first give the caveat that I have absolutely no stake in these debates, or arguably the election as a whole; for the first time in my voting life, I am not a supporter of either of the two major candidates for office. The state of things both internally and externally have formed what most people would refer to as “Libertarian” mindset,  however I’m reluctant to label myself as such. This election I am supporting Ron Paul, and unfortunately that seems like nothing more than an idealistic vote at this point — however, I digress…..

Ok, let me be the first to admit I haven’t been following up on these VP candidates nearly as much as I should, the most I knew about Sarah Palin coming into tonight was she made for some pretty awesome memes online, and apparently made SNL culturally relevant for the first time in seven years. Biden I was totally in the dark about as well. After watching the debate, a few things became clear, however, I don’t think they were the “selling-points” either side was really looking for. With that being said, I have a complete understanding now of why McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. Love her or hate her she’s profoundly charismatic, and has the same allure that W had over Kerry in the previous election. Say what you will about W but the fact of the matter is W is more of an “average Joe” you would run into at the local bar on a slow Friday night and get into casual conversation with. You may not necessarily agree with the guy but, you connect with him on a social level. Palin is able to accomplish this through her use of conversational English over strict eloquence during the debate. Unfortunately, for the GOP this time, it’s going to take more than a down-to-earth personality to shake up the Obama hype-train. Unfortunately, where she stands on issues, I have no freaking clue — anytime she began to try and speak at any great length about anything it turned into some long diatribe about who knows what. Listening to Sarah Palin reminded me of my days in college; a somewhat attractive female speaking very quickly and using a lot of words, but even after a couple minutes I haven’t really picked up anything of substance.

Biden I am not too sure of, first off, he doesn’t know what Article I of the Constitution of the United States provisions, this may seem like a minor detail but if you are going to use this as a debate point, make sure you are using it correctly. When asked about Clean Coal, he pointed the finger at our one trillion dollar lender for the horrors of global warming. Now might be a good time to point out that the United States hasn’t never accepted the terms of the Kyoto Protocol — who are we to go around pointing the finger? Biden also seemed to want to contradict his own running-mate quite a bit, to the point where I wondered if they have ever gotten together to discuss their stance on policy. Barack Obama said he would sit down with Ahmadinejad, Biden claims otherwise, which is disappointing considering Barack Obama’s own site has an entire page dedicated to explaining Obama’s stance on this issue. And as far as small-businesses and small-business owners going unaffected by a tax increase at the $250k mark, that just doesn’t seem to add up to me.

This debate, for better or worse was not the train-wreck everybody expected Sarah Palin to fall into, and to be quite honest, there were times I felt her approach to the debate had Biden appearing to be on the defensive, whether or not it will have any measurable effect, or has one measurable enough to cause any real change is a whole other story. Either way, that 90 minutes pretty much solidified it in my head, I’m not voting for either of those two people to be in the White House next year.

(This article was Cross-Published from bipped.com)