Sarah,

You did really well in the Alaska gubernatorial debate because you were being yourself and talking about what you knew.

You are not going to know about some of the stuff they ask you about on October 2nd, but you should still just be yourself. If you truly don’t know about something that’s asked, just say “I don’t know much about that but here’s what I think …”

Don’t try to summon up a blizzard of words to fill in the space where a “correct” answer should go. Just talk about what you know about. America will love you for it.

Omniscience in our political candidates is way overrated. Most of them are talking crap, all the time. Take Barack last night: He was reaching for details and he got slapped down like a naughty puppy. I mean “Kissinger” of all things. How dumb was that?

You’ll be up against Joe Biden, whose wealth of knowledge was worth precisely less than one percent of the vote in the primaries. Nobody cares about what Joe knows or thinks. And by the time he’s finished talking, nobody will remember what the question was.

Joe is going to attempt to expertly fit the formulaic role for a debate which by definition all viewers hate. He will be talking the crap.

Your opening, your excellent opportunity, is to be yourself. Be authentic. Go off topic. If you are authentic, you will be far more attractive than Joe Biden on topic.

Keep this in mind: When Joe Biden is on topic, he is boring as hell. When Joe Biden is authentic, he is nutso crazy.

So don’t try to match Joe answer-for-answer, fact-for-fact. A lot of his facts are going to be blithering silliness. If you have the facts, use them. But much more important is that you face up against Joe person-to-person.

The viewing audience is going to be somewhat interested in the technicalities of both of your answers – but really, they won’t. No one cares what a vice president thinks about an issue.

What the viewers will be looking for is: Who is more interesting and authentic? Who represents me? The vast majority of the time in these instances, the answer is “no one so I will just vote for the less problematic person.”

Joe Biden is counting on that trend to continue. He will be the less problematic politician. And frankly, if you are going to go toe-to-toe you are probably going to lose out in the “politician” contest. When it comes to talking crap, you are not so great. You repeat your talking points too frequently and do not appear authentic at all when doing so.

Where you can break through is via your personality. Joe Biden, God love him, is generally not very interesting and on the few occasions he is interesting – when he is authentic – he tends to be weird.

You are not weird at all. You have a more widespread connection with the American people than anyone else on the national ticket, by a long shot. That is your strength.

We look at all of these guys running for office and say, “Who the hell are they?” We look at you and say “Maybe she is one of us.”

If you are one of us on October 2nd, John McCain will win the presidency.

You might miss an answer, you might mispronounce a foreign leader’s name, you might say “I don’t know,” but if you are, finally, someone going to Washington who we can identify with and trust, we will fall all over ourselves to make sure you get into office.

Sarah, you have been chewed up in the mainstream media meat grinder. No matter what you do in the debate, THEY are going to hate you. Their artillery is already aimed at you. The way you blast them out of the water is by appearing in the debate as an authentic American with your own ideas, rather than talking points. Yeah, it’s hard because the McCain people have all these talking points for you. But screw’em. Tell us what you think, about every question asked in the debate. If you do that, you win.