Although I�ve seen Youtube clips, I didn�t watch Sarah Palin�s speech at the Republican convention, so I�d never experienced the full Saracuda Hustle before Thursday night�s debate.

I was as astonished as Joe Biden, in that happy-to-be-in-the-presence-of-such-a-wild-and-attractive-woman kind of leering male way, at Palin�s antics. She�s always struck me as a weird amalgam of Shirley Temple, the Church Lady, and Raquel Welch in designer eyeglasses. I wouldn�t have been surprised to see her suddenly strip down to a cavegirl bikini and sing �On the Good Ship Lollipop,� holding a cross.

Let�s face it, she was flirting with me the whole time. I mean, Bill Clinton was a flirt, but I don�t recall him ever crinkling up his nose straight into the camera. She winked at me at least twice. I kept thinking, what if this was Biden doing this? I can�t recall a single presidential or vice presidential candidate in my lifetime, including Geraldine Ferraro, ever spending an entire television appearance doing a cutesy-poo routine.

I genuinely liked Joe Biden Thursday night, who, especially in comparison with Palin, the talking Caribou Barbie doll, came off as a fully-rounded and compassionate human being, warts and all.

I�ve never really been a fan of Biden�s, who�s let too many oleaginous right-wing judges slip through his hands as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And one thing Palin got right was Biden�s interventionist history. But he seems a kind man; and the sad fact is, everybody in his political class, including Obama, the Lion of Afghanistan, is trapped in the military-industrial Matrix. By those standards, I thought Obama�s choice of Biden was yet another example of his brilliant mind at work.

Gwen Ifill, the moderator from PBS, did a good job keeping the conversation lively, but she left a lot of important questions unasked. She had a perfect opportunity -- the specter of Dick Cheney having been summoned in the back-and-forth about the role of VP, and with the release of the Department of Justice report this week suggesting possible criminal politicization of the DOJ by Rove & Company -- to ask about abuse of power, and asking political appointees to do questionable things. It�s curious that the media show so little interest in stonewalled subpoenas as a general matter, from Troopergate to the fired US attorneys.

Lively as the discussion was, however, I had a hard time staying awake sometimes, which really irritated me because it was interfering with my fantasies about me and Sarah off alone in the woods. I�d been up late the night before, and sometimes the train of thought was gosh-darn difficult to follow, as Fantasy Girl might say.

I mean, Ifill would ask a question, or Biden would make a point, and then the focus would shift to Palin, who would take a beat while she shuffled through her note cards (in her mind or on the podium, I don�t really know, though they both were looking down a lot). Then she would start droning on with some florid and ludicrous right-wing talking point or campaign slogan that I�d heard what, a million and a half times before, and Sarah and I would disappear somewhere off in dreamland.

In an unprecedented way, Palin�s presence in this campaign represents the final degrading step in the celebritization of presidential politics. Because I won�t give up hope, I�ll continue to hope that the Obama era will bring some return to the politics of reason favored by James Madison and his Founding Father associates (�Gee, willikers, Senator Omadison -- can I call you Jimmy? -- up in small town Alaska, we don�t go for that East Coast elitist church-state separation thingy, know what I mean?�).

Meanwhile, I choose Sarah Palin as the candidate I�d most like to go off in the woods and gut a moose with -- though I�d keep a close eye on the knife the whole time.