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The VP Candidate Debates: Lowering the Playing Field

The vice presidential debate is approaching fast and both camps are anxiously anticipating the battle for wits.

Pundits agree: what Joe Biden lacks in charisma

Sarah Palin more than makes up for in random silliness.

It is likely the debate will be indistinguishable from that family reunion when your somewhat dull and distracted great uncle was trapped in the corner with that woman your cousin married – the one who won’t stop talking about that time she was chosen as a contestant on “The Price Is Right” and won a gas grill.

The moderator for Thursday’s debate will be PBS journalist Gwen Ifill, and she has a nearly impossible job ahead of her. If she plays “hardball” and sticks to foreign relations, macroeconomics, civil liberties, the Hague Convention, or the U.S. judiciary, the GOP will cry foul and accuse her of sexism.

On the other hand, if she asks the debaters the candidates’ opinions on evolution, biology, the Big Bang, and witchcraft, we will all go insane.

How can she help voters compare apples and oranges and decide which one of them to put into high office? Here are a few suggestions for debate topics that will not unfairly give either candidate an advantage:

✵ Is being a parent the hardest job – yet the most important?

✵ Do you ever look for your favorite sweater and realize you left it in your other house?

✵ Do a majority of Americans view your religion as wacky?

✵ Is it true that after tonight Joe Biden will step aside for Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin will step aside for a politician?

✵ Do Lauren and Doug have a chance for real happiness on “The Hills”?

Let's all agree to dissemble disagreeably.

Joe Biden, Master of the Hand Jive!

JOHN McCAIN: THE NEW WIZARD OF MENLO PARK

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior McCain campaign advisor, broke the news that it was actually John McCain who invented the Blackberry and the nation was astounded to learn that the most important office gadget of our time sprang from the loins of none other than Senator McCain, rumored to be a computer newbie.

"[Y]ou’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create," Holtz-Eakin said. "And that's what he did. He both regulated and deregulated the industry."

Thanks to Holtz-Eakin’s outburst, we now know McCain was somehow responsible for the Blackberry or something and it had something to do with communication begin powerful and his time on the Senate Commerce Committee and something something.

Surely, McCain is hiding his light under a bushel and I wonder what else was up under there. Surely, there are other, just as likely, John McCain inventions:

The Fresno scraper

The chocolate chip cookie

The tango

The particle accelerator

The vibrating egg

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Mint

To give the senator the benefit of the doubt, when the staffer credited McCain with the Blackberry, he might have meant the fruit.