LA Times' "Top of the Ticket" blogger Andrew Malcolm makes a good point in the lead-up to the Palin-Biden debate:

The upcoming downside for the Obama-Biden campaign is that its supporters became so flustered over Palin's surprisingly explosive popularity coming out of the GOP convention. They have so successfully mocked, derided and lowered expectations for Palin in Thursday night's VP debate that if she doesn't drool or speak in tongues, many millions still open to persuasion will be impressed.

Al Gore's campaign made the exact same mistake going into the 2000 debates. So all Texas Gov. George W. Bush had to do was not lose.

In that sense Democrats may have played right into a PR cul-de-sac. Biden, for instance, described Palin as merely better-looking than him. A far better communications strategy would have been to insincerely portray Palin with superlatives as a superwoman, make it harder, not easy, for her to impress. Too late now.

Of course some conservatives have joined the low-expectations game for Palin, as well, particularly Kathleen Parker, who called for her replacement following Palin's Couric interview. So both Republicans and Democrats have low expectations for Palin. Another brilliant ploy from the Rovian machine?

Probably not. But certainly the McCain campaign, going off of Bill Kristol's column today, is starting to think that the best way to use Sarah Palin is to let her be Sarah Palin.