Billy Kristol tells us that in Thursday's debate
Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president.
Now, I'm sure most of us are expecting a Palin train wreck, particularly when it comes to foreign policy questions. On the other hand, a number of pundits believe that Palin will be able to hold her own on domestic policy. One sound bite I expect to hear from her is "I balanced Alaska's budget, and even created a surplus. We distributed the surplus to Alaska's taxpayers."
And that will give Biden the opening to finish her once and for all.
Palin is likely to pop this statement into any one of several openings. The first could be as a follow-on to "Senator Obama has never balanced a budget." Or it might be "John McCain and I know how to reign in spending and balance the budget." But at some point I expect her to say:
I balanced Alaska's budget, and even created a surplus. We distributed the surplus to Alaska's taxpayers.
To score bonus points, she's likely to say
I took on the oil companies in Alaska.
To which Biden must reply:
"Governor, I respect your accomplishment in balancing Alaska's budget and creating a surplus. But we must look at the facts as to how you did that because it's not a model that will work for states like Missouri, Michigan or Ohio where we've lost tens of thousands of jobs unless those states discover a few billion barrels of oil underneath their lands.
Last year, you set a budget of $10 billion dollars for Alaska. To pay for it, Alaskans paid only $3 billion in the types of taxes most of us are used to--sales tax and income tax.
"But you raised $10 billion from a windfall profits tax from the oil companies. You were able to raise $10 billion from the oil companies, and give some of it back to Alaskans, because the price of oil was so much higher than the cost of producing it in Alaska. In other words, Governor, you and Alaskans benefitted from $4 per gallon gasoline prices while the rest of middle-class America suffered.
What I find surprising about all this is that Barack Obama and I support a windfall profits tax on oil companies, and John McCain opposes it. So your actions as Governor agree with our position, and is the opposite of John McCain's position.
So, Governor, you have to answer two question. The first is, do you and John McCain believe this oil is Alaska's oil or America's oil? And second, if a windfall profits tax is good enough for Alaskans, why isn't it good enough for the millions of middle-class Americans who are hurting right now and could use some relief?"
Go Joe!