Immediately after the first Bush/Gore debate in 2000, preliminary polling showed that Gore had won the debate (56% to 42%). But Bush’s surrogates hit the airwaves like a hurricano: Bush had performed well considering that he sucked at debating. And did you notice how Gore was sighing a lot? How disrespectful!

By the end of the week, Gore’s debate win had been flipped and he found himself completely on the defensive going into the second debate.

It’s hardly shocking to point out that televised Presidential debates have always been about more than making strong and compelling arguments based in fact. You don’t have to look any further than the poll results which showed that people listening to the Kennedy/Nixon debate on the radio thought Nixon had won while people watching the same debate on television thought that Kennedy had won. And while that poll has been disputed, the belief that visual presentation is an important factor has nevertheless shaped the media’s coverage of the debates.

The media’s coverage has two significant effects: First, it defines the criteria that people use to determine whether a debate was won or lost. Second, the media’s “consensus narrative” of the result of the debate will reshape the opinions people have of the debate. (The Bush/Gore debates are the most pertinent example of that effect, but it’s really a manifestation of the same psychological factors that contribute to peer pressure. Ever known someone who saw a movie and liked it, but then decided it sucked after discovering that Rotten Tomatoes rated it at 15%? Same thing.)

The recent conviction has been that Sarah Palin is destined for an epic failure when she goes to debate Joe Biden. But even if we assume that Palin’s shortcomings in knowledge and experience on the national stage will manifest themselves, there are still three ways in which she could achieve a significant upset.

First, there’s the Expectations Game. It seems absurd to me that the candidates should be graded on some kind of personalized curve, but that’s nevertheless the reality of it. (“Well, Candidate A is clearly not as intelligent or insightful as Candidate B. But, frankly, Candidate A is a complete idiot and he did manage to walk to the podium without walking into a wall… so I think that’s an A+ performance. Candidate B, on the other hand, mispronounced the name of a the Vice President of Paraguay, so I give him a C.”)

And could expectations be any lower for Sarah Palin at this point?

The McCain campaign’s decision to sequester Palin from the press has met with ridicule and criticism. The clear narrative that has developed is that the McCain campaign has decided that they can’t let her answer questions because they don’t believe she can answer them. And I’ve heard plenty of people express the idea that she must be “even worse than we think” because the McCain campaign apparently believes that the damage it’s taking from sequestering her is better than the damage it would take if it didn’t.

But it’s also possible that the McCain campaign has simply decided that this is the best way to lower the expectations for Palin going into the debate.

Basically there is a strategic advantage to making Sarah Palin look like the Uwe Boll of politics. If you go to a Uwe Boll film you can easily find yourself saying, “Well, that wasn’t so bad. I mean, it didn’t make blood actually run from my eyes.” Whereas if Steven Spielberg had made the same film, the words “that wasn’t so bad” wouldn’t have even crossed your mind.

Similarly, with expectations set so low, Sarah Palin has a pretty low hurdle to clear. They did the same with Bush in 2000: Set the bar as low as they possibly could and then deliver a decent debate that looks positively amazing compared to the expectations.

Second, there’s the matter of Looking and Sounding Presidential. This has absolutely nothing to do with actually saying anything insightful or intelligent. It’s a matter of visual presentation; a smooth speaking style; and not saying anything that’s factually incorrect.

It’s very clear that Sarah Palin is good at delivering a canned speech. But she’s also apparently very good when it comes to political debates. Her opponent in the Alaskan gubernatorial debate cites her performance in that debate was the turning point in the campaign. And a large part of her success lay in delivering simple answers in an authoritative fashion.

The McCain campaign has forced changes in the format of the VP debates in order to simplify the questions and shorten the answers. You can rest assured that they are spending all of their free time coaching Palin in short, canned responses.

Finally, there’s the Post-Debate Spin. This is where the campaign surrogates try to establish the narrative of what happened in the debate. And this is crucial because (a) more people will see this post-debate narrative than will actually see the debate itself and (b) as we’ve discussed, even people who actually saw the debate can have their opinion of it re-shaped by the media’s narrative.

My point with all this? Simply that we shouldn’t be setting our own expectations too high in hoping for a complete Palin meltdown at the debate. And that, in some ways, by exaggerating our own expectations of Palin’s failure we end up feeding into the anti-intellectual process that Republicans use to “win” these debates.

I’m hopeful that we will see Palin screw-up and become an even bigger millstone around McCain’s neck when it comes to independent voters. But I think that the growing consensus that this is some sort of guaranteed slam dunk certainty is about as naive as the certainty everyone had that Gore would use the debates to solidify his 3-5% lead over Bush in the national polls.

I’m actually much more hopeful about this Friday’s debate on foreign policy between Obama and McCain. The expectations game favors Obama; Obama looks and sounds more presidential; and if Obama can win that debate it will end up establishing a narrative that will be almost impossible for McCain to overcome as they move towards the final debate on domestic policy.

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