The McCain campaign admits that Gov. Palin was wrong when she suggested that McCain also supports the homeowner protection provisions described by Sen. Biden in the debate.

This
confirms what I suspected at the time (and other times during the
debate) -- that Sarah Palin was bluffing her way past her own
ignorance. She once again showed a lack of "straight-talk" of the worst
kind -- afraid to admit her own ignorance, yet willing to risk a lie in
order to give the answer she thought would be politically pleasing to
the audience, i.e. what people wanted to hear.

The gaffe by
Palin occurred at a part of the debate where Sen. Biden described the
Obama/Biden position and stated that to his knowledge, Sen. McCain did
not support such provisions. Gov. Palin briefly responded by stating
(with a slight but noticeable hesitation) that Biden's statement was
not accurate, before moving on to talk about a different topic rather
than the question at hand.

Because the rules prohibited the
candidates from addressing each other (and probably also due to a
strategic decision to avoid attacking Palin and focusing on McCain)
Sen. Biden avoided confronting Palin when she either avoided questions
or gave shaky, vague, or even contradictory, inconsistent answers. I
personally think that while Biden was otherwise superb in his
performance, he could have done a bit more to indirectly suggest that
Palin clarify her responses, or to actually address the questions. But
I suppose there was a danger of appearing condescending or snide, and
overall I do think Biden showed superior command of the issues and was
successful in making the overall point that McCain/Palin do not
represent any significant new ideas.

However, the real failing
here is that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, did not do a good enough job of
simply asking the candidates to answer the questions or asking
follow-ups. The example above is a case where Gov. Palin got away with
a dubious (and revealed to be incorrect) response and pivoting to a
different topic. Had the moderator actually followed up on this and
other points, instead of allowing Palin to filibuster in avoiding
questions, we might have seen a similar struggle as we did in the
Couric interview.

This tendency of Palin to try to bluff her way
through answers reveals a false bravado born of insecurity that very
much concerns me. She appears to be so insecure that she's willing to
indicate false knowledge or take unintentional policy positions rather
than admit her own ignorance. If she were to have any position of
serious authority (and she pretty much admitted she wants power)
regarding national security or foreign relations, it could be a very
precarious situation for the country. Will she be willing to confess
her ignorance of issues to staff, congressional leaders, or even
foreign leaders and diplomats? Or will she try to bluff her way through
a situation, and unknowingly convey a false position (as she did at the
debate) that is then acted upon by the people to whom she is
communicating.