´óÏó´«Ã½

I promise you: I will get over this Sarah Palin obsession very soon. But ... On Sunday morning, Cal Thomas and I did a post-mortem on the first presidential debate. And 'post-mortem' is pretty accurate. The candidates' first major encounter was duller than any of us expected. But Thursday will be different. Because on Thursday, Sarah Palin goes head-to-head with Joe Biden in a televised debate.

Biden is a very accomplished debater; so his coaches will be advising him not to get too aggressive, and to avoid pummelling a hockey mom into the ground on national television. He needs to work up some modesty for the occasion, and avoid off-the-cuff gaffes that will be quoted for the next month.

As for Sarah Palin: she has apparently been in politics boot camp for a couple of weeks. The McCain team have kept the press away from here, she has agreed to hardly any interviews (and the Katie Couric interview may explain way), and she has been having some carefully choreographed meetings with a few foreign heads of government. Perhaps the prep team want Governor Palin to be able to name-check some leaders she has met to offset the public's impression that her only foreign policy insight is the ability to see Russia from the kitchen window of her Alaskan home. We will soon see whether the fast-track briefing has succeeded, when the governor meets the senator on Thursday.

In the meantime, think back to Matt Damon's suggestion that this whole business looks like 'a bad Disney movie': the unknown hockey mom plucked from the obscurity of the Alaskan wilderness and catapulted into White House. Just imagine how an ordinary, decent American could transform the reclaimed swampland of the US Capitol? It sounds like a remake of with ice skates.

No sooner is the idea mooted, than a trailer for the new was added to the internet. . It's brilliantly funny. I have only one concern about this trailer: some swing voters in the US may think this movie looks 'kinda cool' and mix up their ballot papers with their DVD rental cards.