Now that the VP Debate is behind us, I'm actually relieved that it produced no stunning gaffes or garbled nonsense from either candidate. Biden was solid, and Palin did not sound as hopelessly out-of-her-league as she did when talking to Katie Couric.

Good. We can, perhaps, take a collective deep breath. We all know what we need to know about Palin, one way or the other. Those who think (like me) that she is not competent to be President of the United States saw nothing last night to suggest that she is, while those who think otherwise, I'm sure, feel that her performance vindicated their view. No "game-changers," as they say, so we can turn our attention away from questions about the virtues of small town life, moose hunting, and whether Sarah Palin reads newspapers or not, and return to the only real question that matters in this election: Who is going to get the United States out of the colossal and potentially catastrophic mess it finds itself in at this moment? Anyone not terrified by the news from the financial markets isn't paying attention. This election looks so much like the 1932 election it's eerie. The Republicans have been in power for a considerable period of time. The Stock Market has crashed, and the champagne has stopped flowing on Wall Street. A liquidity crisis is looming; in the old days, when things moved more slowly, it took several years to set in, but we're unlikely to have that long a window this time. The Democrats have nominated the Brilliant Orator (whom many belittle as some kind of effete intellectual snob, or even a "socialist"); the Republicans have put forth Herbert Hoover -- a very smart and capable man without much of an idea about what has gone wrong with the economy or how to fix it. (McCain even looks like Hoover, for crying out loud). The '32 election changed the course of the 20th century. So if we're going to argue about something (and we are, and we should), that's what we should be arguing about.