It seems to me that people are focusing too much on raising Palin’s net favorability rating, making people see her as a plausible commander-in-chief, etc. Those things should be far down her priority list tonight. Both veep candidates tonight should have as their major goal the traditional one: defending their own running mate while criticizing the other candidate’s. So neither Biden nor Palin should be mainly trying to score points against each other. If the veep candidate doesn’t end up with higher negatives on Election Day than the presidential candidate, that veep nominee hasn’t done the job right.
But of course to make the case for her ticket over Biden’s she will have to be conversant and commanding on national issues. She should make the most of her regular-gal appeal, though, and constantly connect national issues with the experiences of small business owners, mortgage holders, and PTA mothers. She has the potential to do that sort of thing better than any of the other three national candidates.