All the righties are spinning the VP debate as "WHOOPEE! No gaffes by Palin!" But, as we know, the format of the 'debate' made it possible for the Know Nothing governor to avoid having to speak to things she was unable to speak to, which she couldn't do one-on-one with Gibson and Couric, so maybe looking for major gaffes is not the right way to evaluate her performance.
I just went through the transcript and here's my quick account of the times Palin revealed she did not know enough about a topic to respond to it by simple evasion or the changing of the subject. Let's call these phenomena her Moments of Ignorance Revealed.
#1: Biden notes that McCain wrote an article claiming he wants to deregulate health care just as he helped deregulate banking. Ifill asks Palin if she'd like to respond. Palin cannot and instead accuses Obama and Biden of "vot[ing] for the largest tax increases in U.S. history."
#2: Biden directly responds to this wild accusation and returns to McCain's constant support for deregulation. Ifill asks Palin a second time if she wants to respond. A second time, Palin evades and here even boldly announces that evasion will be her strategy throughout the debate: "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or [Biden] want to hear." She then talks about reducing taxes as mayor of Wasilla.
#3: Ifill asks Palin if the McCain ticket isn't engaged in "taking things out on the poor" in their plan to tax employer health benefits. Palin wholly evades the question; she instead claims to be a member of the "middle class" and accuses Biden of saying it was patriotic to raise taxes, which he did not say.
#4: Ifill asks both what elements of their policy proposals might have to be delayed or dropped due to the bailout. After Biden's cogent answer, Palin evades the question and brings up, seemingly out of nowhere, Obama's vote for an energy plan in 2005. Ifill asks her the question again. Seemingly not understanding it ("what promises have you and your campaigns made...that you're not going to be able to keep"), she evades by noting she has only been on the ticket for five weeks and therefore hasn't made any promises she will have to keep.
#5: Ifill asks Palin a question about McCain's support for last year's legislation to make it more difficult for mortgage-holders to declare bankruptcy. Palin responds with a one sentence answer ("Yes, I would have [supported it]"), and immediately evades any further discussion by changing the subject, this time to McCain's fictional "call for reform" of Fannie and Freddie in 2006.
#6: Biden says he suspects McCain and Palin do not support the plan he and Obama do to allow bankruptcy courts to readjust mortgage interest rates and principal in order to help keep people in their homes. Ifill asks if this is true. Palin gives another one sentence answer ("That is not so"), acknowledges this is a "quick answer," but rather than discuss it in more detail, evades and talks about "East Coast politicians" who don't want to drill in ANWR.
#7: Ifill asks Palin if the ticket supports caps on carbon emissions. Palin gives a one sentence affirmative answer again. Ifill asks it again, probably hoping to get some elaboration. Palin gives her this: "I do. I do."
#8: Ifill asks Palin to elaborate on her earlier (before she was on the ticket) request to "see a real clear plan for an exit strategy" in Iraq. Palin cheers for the surge and has nothing at all to say about an exit strategy. Biden calls her on it (he should have done this more): "Gwen, with all due respect, I didn't hear a plan."
#9: Ifill asks "what should be the trigger...when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?" Palin evades the question and repeats the generic "dangerous regimes...cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons" point she had just made. She then leaps off into a tangent about Afghanistan and the need for surge principles there. Biden then responds to Ifill's request to speak to the original question by actually answering it. Ifill turns again to Palin: "Governor?" AGAIN, Palin has no response and evades, citing "McClellan" [sic] on the surge in Afghanistan.
#10: Ifill asks the two about their "Achilles heel." Palin evades (my speculation is that she does not know what the phrase means) and repeats a vapid phrase she'd just used about her "experience...as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator."
#11: Ifill asks them for "a single issue...in which you were forced to change a long-held view in order to accomodate changed circumstances." Biden responds, then Palin fails to understand the question, giving as her answer the ordinary compromises needed to get budgets passed (did she therefore "change her long-held view" about anything?). Tellingly, she then essentially says that she has NEVER changed her mind about any "long-held view."
So ELEVEN times in this short debate, Palin was directly put a question and utterly failed to respond to it. You may bet large sums of money that the reason she did so is because she had nothing on her prepared script that dealt with the question at hand.
By my count, she evaded questions roughly three times more frequently than she actually responded to them (and others have written about the quality of those responses).
Under the circumstances of the ridiculous debate format that virtually made it impossible for either Biden or Ifill to effectively pin Palin at those moments where she clearly did not know anything relevant to the question asked, evaluating her performance based on how many major 'gotchas' occurred is wrong-headed. Look instead to the number of Moments of Ignorance Revealed. By that standard, this is still a crushingly dismal and incompetent performance.