I had to watch the repeat of the Vice-Presidential debate tonight, which means I got to see all the people a-twittering about it first. Based on what I was reading, I expected something very different from what I saw.

But then, I’m about as politically ignorant as you can get. (Without using the word “repug” or spitting out complaints about “liberals” like it were a dirty word, of course). My vote in the 2008 election was already decided back in 2000, so the only reason I’ve been following the election at all is to make sure neither Obama or Biden is exposed as a baby cannibal (and even then, I’d want to get more details on the baby and its tastiness before I rush to judgement). I’m ignorant partly out of laziness; partly out of a misplaced optimism about the “representative” part of “representative democracy;” and partly because whenever I watch unprocessed “news” I get the urge to punch, kick, and stab things, and it doesn’t go away until I change the channel to cartoons.

So I was surprised to see anything other than the images the headlines and pundits have been creating for me over the past month: Palin didn’t trip over herself or start babbling completely incoherently or pull out a gun and shoot a moose, skin it, and make a rape kit out of it. And Biden didn’t plagiarize someone else’s speech (I’ve still got residual punditry from the last few campaigns running around in my brain), yell at her for being an idiot, or pull out his gun and threaten to shoot Obama if he tried to take it away. Instead what we got were two reasonably well-spoken adults going on television in front of millions of people and delivering their parties’ talking points.

That’s not to say that it was “close.” There was only one person in the debate who proved himself qualified to be Vice President, much less President. If I were Biden, I’d have been insulted at even the implication it was a contest — my estimation of the man went up 100 times, if only because he never stopped and said, “Seriously? I’m supposed to be responding to that?” But he wisely chose to take the situation for what it was: simply another opportunity to campaign for Obama. The only ones who could consider it “close” are those who’ve become so cynical and numb to the political process that they’re simply analyzing the analysis with their responsometers, abandoning any pretense of actual government and simply paying attention to marketability and watchability, like the crassest of TV executives.
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Since I’ve been confronted with my age (thirty-seven) a lot lately, I’ve been wondering:

1) If you’re around my age (thirty-seven), can you recite the Preamble to the US Constitution? If so, can you do it without singing it?

2) If you’re significantly below my age, can you recite the Preamble to the US Constitution? And were you guys subjected to Schoolhouse Rock as much as we were?

3) Did they ever make a Schoolhouse Rock song about the role of the Vice President and how we can work together to give that position more power?