You see, this weekend, my father and I were engaged in another one of our political debates, during which he likes to deliver any number of salacious, below-the-belt zingers designed to get me to leap out of my chair and storm out in a huff.

The conversation hadn’t yet hit a fever pitch — meaning Dad was still playing fair, most probably because Rob was present and participating (Dad only likes to make girls cry) — when my father made a series of statements that quite literally knocked my poor mother out of her chair.

First, he conceded that John McCain is far too old and bat-shit insane to be president. Then he said he just couldn’t bring himself to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket, and that, come November 4, he might commit the ultimate sacrilege for a man who never misses an opportunity to voice his opinion: He might not vote at all. 

And just before we thought the world we as knew it had completely unravelled, my father uttered ten of the nicest words he has ever said to me:

“I’m not saying Obama isn’t going to get my vote.”

(It was at this point that we had to get the smelling salts for my mom.)

This is a man who has never remotely considered agreeing with anything any Democrat had to say. My dad pulled himself up by his boot straps and expects everyone else to, too — without the help of his tax dollars, damn it!

This is a card-carrying member of the NRA, who thinks he should be armed for protection at all times, even for a trip to the suburban hardware store. This is an avid hunter who insists on wearing a blaze orange hat all winter (again, in the middle of the suburbs) and thinks our family pet (a hunting dog, of course) should have a matching blaze orange collar. This is a man who, at any given time, owns no fewer than three gas-guzzling outdoor recreational vehicles, which he tows behind his Ford F150 pickup truck.

Barring that crazy talk about dinosaurs and humans walking among each other, my dad is practically Sarah Palin. If you told me he was the one yelling “terrorist!” from the audience at the Palin rally last week, I’d have believed you in a heartbeat.

My father voted for George W. Bush TWICE. The only time I ever saw him and my mom fight was during the 1988 election, when Dad pasted a “DEFEND FIREARMS. DEFEAT DUKAKIS” bumper sticker on our refrigerator. To this day — for the sake of their marriage, I imagine — my parents do not discuss their politics with each other.

So you see, if this man is remotely considering not voting for McCain, or even refusing to vote at all, then so, too, are independents and undecideds and disgruntled conservatives across the country. And if my dad might actually vote for Barack Obama, so might millions of others who never thought they’d see the day when a black man won the presidency — let alone that they would be the ones to help make it happen.

It’s not that I’m concerned about my candidate’s superior ability to connect with the people, which is what this format is all about. There has never been any question during this campaign that it is Barack Obama, with his charisma and good looks, who can reach out and touch people. It is McCain, on the other hand, with his creepy goiter and his awkward war-hero arm gestures and his child-molestor heh-heh-hehs, who voters DO NOT want touching them. Under any circumstances.

Mind you, I am plenty tickled that the meeting is taking place at Belmont University, thrusting into the international spotlight my beloved Nashville — you know, the place where even a highly educated, fairly cosmopolitan person will unblinkingly tell you that you shouldn’t be living in sin with your fiance because the Jews killed Jesus, but you are welcome to sit next to him at church this Sunday.

What actually worries me is that this forum will feature local “uncommitted” voters who will be permitted to ask their own un-prescreened questions. I guess everyone had to write their question on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope, and Tom Brokaw is going to call on them at random.

Seriously? They’re going to plunk down Joe Six Pack, completely unprepared and haphazardly vetted, hand him a microphone, and let him have at? On the world’s stage? LIVE?!?

This is a train wreck waiting to happen, and yet I feel like I have seen this before.

Oh that’s right: McCain thinks that not only should Joe Six Pack get to speak extemporaneously on live television, but his wife should also be the vice president.

Meanwhile, I’ll be very interested to see if and how McCain “takes the gloves off,” as he intends to do. I mean, to punch someone, you’ve first got to look in their general direction — something he couldn’t bring himself to do in the last debate. I don’t doubt that he’ll be slinging mud, but without a lectern to scowl behind, there’s just no way he can do it and still look dignified.

Obama, on the other hand, can deliver an indictment while looking you calmly and steadily in the eye. And then he can turn and flash a megawatt smile that could make even the most skeptical of so-called “uncommitted” voters swoon.

If Sarah Palin was my Christmas, then tonight may well be my birthday.

To wit, McCain is dodging the presidential debates in a feeble attempt to distract voters from his recent drop in the polls (because out-of-left-field stunts, like Sarah Palin, have worked for him before) and to try to make it look like Barack Obama doesn’t care about fixing his country (even though it was Obama who reached out to McCain’s camp this morning to suggest they write a bipartisan statement on the economy), thus buying himself some time to beef up on his econ and to be photographed looking stern and important in Washington (consequently distracting the media and the rest of Congress from the actual crisis they’re trying to solve), even though he (admittedly!) lacks an acceptable understanding of the global economy and really has nothing meaningful to contribute whatsoever.

Because that’s how McCain would lead this country in our time of need: by pulling media stunts to improve his own image, by shuffling papers in Washington, and by hiding and stalling when the going gets tough.

Where have we seen this before? Oh, that’s right … in the very same self-serving politicians that McCain is supposedly going to kick out of Washington.

The world knows that now, during this economic crisis, is actually the most important time for the candidates to defend and debate their plans and qualifications for the presidency of the free world, the way Lincoln did during the Civil War, and Reagan during the Cold War, and Bush during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (both of which he started!) (and he still won the election!).

But The Maverick is going to break from that precedent and … take a time out for a nap and a cookie. He may have invented the Blackberry – the very device that keeps the candle burning at both ends for millions of people — but he sure as hell can’t multi-task.

McCain forgets that it is the independents to whom he needs to pander in order to win this election. And if the independents are what they say they are, they’re going to see straight through this malarky.

Now Ole Miss is going to lose a lot of money if the debates are canceled altogether. So are we going to get a full two hours of Obama, then?

Or how about a debate between Obama and Palin? She has learned a lot in the past few weeks, and she has things to say! In fact, just this week, she sat down with Henry Kissinger and discovered that he can not, in fact, see England from his house. And just today, in her interview with Katie Couric, Sarah was oddly reminiscent of the infamous Miss South Carolina …

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and

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Maybe my Friday night isn’t ruined after all!

That was stunning, all right. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I feel stunned.

First, there was endless line of otherwise fairly intelligent Republican pundits who set aside their personal integrity in order to throw themselves on (or perhaps in front of) the Palin bandwagon. Even Rudy Giuliani championed her candidacy, though surely a lifelong New Yorker – and mayor of the city, during the terrorist attacks — couldn’t possibly take her and her small-town experience seriously.

Next came the Evangelicals, who were only too happy to embrace Bristol and her baby daddy, never you mind that scarlet letter poking out the front of her dress or the dirty details of the sin that put it there.

Not that they haven’t already overlooked McCain’s philandering. After all, he had just returned from Vietnam to find that his first wife, a former beauty queen herself, had gotten a little thicker in the thighs. Isn’t a POW entitled to a “get out of jail free” card on that piddly little commandment about adultery? He oughta be entitled to at least a little somethin’-somethin’ from the woman who would become, as she was last night, a perfect life-sized model for Mattel’s next big thing: Grandma Barbie.

And then, the main event: One Fargo-sounding hockey mom, staring vacantly at the teleprompter like a moose into the headlights, delivering her acceptance speech for the nomination for the vice-presidency of the PTA. Whoops! I mean USA.

Apart from the blatant lies about the facts of Obama’s experience and candidacy, Palin’s little Sarah-nade amounted to a 45-minute snark attack. I mean, had Giuliani not gone on for so long, she could have fit in those closing jokes about Obama’s mom, instead of ending so abruptly as she did.

And boy, oh boy, never was a candidate received with so much hooting and hollering from the oh-so-classy members of the Republican Party. Among whom, might I point out, there was nary an iota of pigmentation, of the hair (or what was left of it) or the skin (except for those two black guys they zoomed in on at the very end).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.

Sarah, please! If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Everybody knows that sarcasm is a way of deflecting an insult, and Palin’s mean-spirited attack did less to establish her as a bright and independently strong politician than it did to put her very much on the defensive, like a tenacious pit bull in lipstick who will just. Not. Let. It. Go.

I’m reminded of wrenching Molly’s jaws apart and shaking her entire head to knock free the slice of pizza she snatched from the countertop. Let it go! Loose! DROP IT! BAD GIRL!

Take it from a sarcastic person herself. I have had to learn the hard way that people don’t want to hear you bitching and moaning all the time.

Nobody likes a downer. Wipe that smirk off your face and say something positive.

Or not. Either way, Sarah Palin feels like a Christmas present to me. Unless people are even dumber than I thought. 

Let me see if I can get this straight.

She was mayor of a town with a population similar to that of a community college.

She was governor for less than two years of East Jesus, Nowhere. 

She lists among her achievements high school athletic contests, beauty pageants, PTA leadership, and not aborting a baby with Down Syndrome.

She supports the rape of her state’s natural resources for the procurement of oil. And speaking of rape, she is staunchly against abortion, no matter what the circumstances.

She minored in political science at the University of Idaho. Idaho! 

That kind of information is surely already old gossip in their small Arctic hometown. What’s wrong with McCain that he didn’t figure it out? And what’s wrong with McCain if he did, but, as he claims, doesn’t see it as an issue? Wouldn’t you think that would put off the Evangelical base to which he’s hoping to pander, lest they should be complete and utter hypocrites?

How strong-arming your daughter into a harpoon wedding to her small-town hockey-star high school-dropout boyfriend and ruining three lives (four, if you include Sarah Palin, who will undoubtedly need to mother her child’s child) (or five lives, if you include mine) is better than teaching high school students how to put a condom on a banana, I will never understand.

I truly cannot imagine what will come of her speech tonight at the Republican National Convention. You know, Rob thinks we shouldn’t send out holiday greeting cards with our photo on it because it just gives people fodder to make fun of us. I have a feeling the same goes for Palin when it comes to public speaking.