Illuminating Our Choices

Candidates Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin, take a bow. And you in the huge television audiences, bask in the reflected glory. You all have established in two national political debates that a lot is going right in America, despite our enormous problems.

The value of these debates comes not from any particular information they convey. Voters know they get spit-polished views confected by campaign consultants from polling data. So they greet Barack Obama's endorsement of an immediate NATO membership plan for Ukraine, or Sarah Palin's pledge to work on peace in the Middle East, with appropriate skepticism.

But these debates have become important conveyor belts of indelible attitude and character, of trend-sensing and zeitgeist, sliced into digestible 90-minute segments. Our most successful politicians reformat what we have told them about who we are and what we want, and they play it back to us in ways that reveal much about us and, at times, them.

And they do so under the pressure of television's relentlessly clicking clock, the ultimate arbiter and mix-master of entertainment and political values. The unfulfilled opportunity that Palin would crash and burn -- that is, show definitively that she is John McCain's Achilles' high heel -- turned Thursday night's clash with Joe Biden into "must-see television," our society's equivalent of a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Mecca.

As they verbally wrestled over the shape and size of the middle-class kitchen table, Biden vs. Palin offered a fuller glimpse of an idea that took shape during Obama vs. McCain: This year, culture wars are being eclipsed by culture truces in U.S. politics. Wedge issues of gender, race and sexual orientation are being overshadowed or even defanged by an imploding economy and war-and-peace choices. And that is doubly bad news for the McCain campaign, in light of its recent choices.

One indication of shifting cultural ground came when Biden and Palin warily and hurriedly stressed that they agreed on opposing gay marriage while endorsing civil rights for same-sex couples.

The candidates went into a debater's clinch, each more intent on preventing the other from extracting advantage than in scoring points. (See also: Obama's debate rush to say he agreed with McCain on Russia's invasion of Georgia. And the two presidential nominees staying in lock step on the $700 billion bailout.)

Also notable was the ease with which Biden avoided the gender trap of old-boy politicians seeming to be dismissive of or condescending toward the rising class of new female rivals. The old boys have caught on in handling a challenge that Gerhard Schroeder flubbed in debating Angela Merkel for German leadership in 2005 and that Nicolas Sarkozy mastered in winning the French presidency against Ségolène Royal in 2007.

In as impressive a performance as the Democrats could have hoped for, Biden never gave a hint that he faced an opponent whose gender made any difference. He avoided correcting Palin's entirely understandable fluff of a little-known American general's name and concentrated his fire entirely on McCain, not her.

The general demeanor recalled the Sept. 26 presidential debate, which helped start McCain's slide in the polls. For long stretches, viewers had no cause to recall that they were watching the first black presidential nominee of a major party in American history. Obama himself did not call attention, even indirectly, to this achievement until the very end of the debate, when it would no longer distract.

That night, and even more so in his appearances afterward, McCain confirmed that he had decided to run this race as a Republican, not as an independent-minded maverick with a program different from Bushonomics 101.

Instead, McCain hammered away on tax cuts and restricting government spending as cure-alls. His choice of Palin was an offering to the party's conservative base. It worked for that group, but her presence has begun to cost him dearly with other parts of the electorate who are focusing on pocketbook rather than social issues.

With flashes of humor and spunk, Palin survived Thursday evening. But she did little to dispel the serious doubts about her readiness to be vice president, much less president. America's economic implosion has put issues more urgent and important than culture warfare on the electorate's agenda.

It is far too early to say that just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no racists or sexists in bankruptcies. But for the moment, by choosing Palin and sticking with Bushonomics, the Ancient Mariner seems to have tied the albatross around his own neck.

jimhoagland@washpost.com