How did Sarah Palin make such a remarkable public turnaround in the span of the few short days between her infamous interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson and last night's Vice Presidential debate? Those who tuned in for last night's debate did not see a meltdown, or new material for Tina Fey—they saw a political communicator who recovered some of the debating form that made her a force to be reckoned with in Alaska. How is it that, at least if you are the kind of person who puts stock in polls, she debated Joe Biden, an experienced debater and effective communicator in his own right to a dead heat?

The answer is effective debate coaching. Governor Palin went to debate camp and she paid attention to (among others) the coaching advice of former Liberty University debate coach Brett O'Donnell, now the primary debate consultant for the McCain/Palin ticket. Though I am sad to say that I don't have any insider information to spill, I can say that having worked with Brett O'Donnell for two years, and with the college debate community in general for a good bit longer, Palin was effective because she did three essential things, all of which are well known and widely used strategies in college debate.

First, she controlled the terms of the debate by talking about what she wanted to talk about. This is a well-worn college debating technique. A debater does not necessarily need to be strong on their opponent's arguments if they can control the flow of the debate by continually emphasizing the arguments that they are prepared on and know well. In the interviews with Couric and Gibson, Palin appeared unsure of herself and lacked fluency on the issues, in part, because Couric and Gibson's questions determined the content of her responses. By steadfastly refusing to answer questions, or by only giving one word answers to them when posed directly, Palin took the opportunity to talk about her core issues "directly" to the American people.

Two, to borrow a term from college debating, the majority of Governor Palin's speeches were "blocked" in advance. Managing a wide ranging debate is difficult for any debater, even the most experienced ones. One of the first things that we teach students in college debate is to attempt to predict the arguments that your opponent will use and to write out a "block" (a set of pre-scripted arguments) that apply to any specific version of an argument that your opponent might make. Now, my bet is that in this instance Palin's team "blocked" the debate by writing a 15 or so small (minute long or so) pre-written speeches that Governor Palin could rehearse in advance. The speeches might have been classified by the various broad themes that the consultants for the ticket predicted that moderator Gwen Ifill would ask. You can imagine what the categories were: the bailout, the economy, foreign policy, I am qualified to be VP, global warming, the energy crisis, and so on.

The strategic insight of this way of preparing is that it allowed Governor Palin to do exactly what she did so well in the debate: she could ignore the question posed by the moderator, and could either choose to give one of the pre-"blocked" speeches on an area generally related to the question, to pick up on one strand of what Senator Biden said, or could choose to ignore the topic completely and give a snippet of a speech on an entirely unrelated issue. The danger of the strategy is that a debater might seem to be dodging the issues. But this is the point where one of Governor Palin's most effective rhetorical moves comes into play: with only a little spin, she could claim that she was ignoring the questions for the higher purpose of speaking directly to the American people without Gwen Ifill and "the media" as an intermediary. What she lost in technical debate points, she gained in sincerity and fluency.

Finally, Governor Palin did what we in debate like to call "generating offense," or emphasizing a few big themes that advance the core ideas of your side while putting your opponent on the defensive. Governor Palin introduced two overarching arguments that helped to frame all the individual arguments in last night’s debate: that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are obsessed with talking about the failings of the past and not he future of American politics, and that Biden and Obama are a continuation of Washington politics as usual. These arguments were helpful in “generating offense” because they both framed much of the meat of Biden’s attacks as mere partisanship, and because they help challenge the Obama/Biden ticket’s core theme of “change.” But more importantly, Governor Palin’s “offense” gave her a coherent narrative that weaved all her individual responses together for a viewing audience, and thus contributed to a sense of overall coherence.

For what it is worth, I also thought Senator Biden had a good debate, especially when he did not allow himself to be hemmed in for fear of attacking or patronizing Governor Palin (I am thinking here of his very nicely executed rebuttal to the idea that McCain is a “maverick”). I will not weigh in here on who I thought won the debate, in part because I’m not quite sure what the benchmark for “winning” a political debate is: is it the candidate who made the best arguments, the candidate who looked most vice-presidential, or the one who connected with the people best. Whichever of these it is, we can at least say that as a result of some good debate coaching and intensive preparation, Sarah Palin was able to prove that she belonged on the same stage as Senator Biden, and that alone is an important win for Governor Palin and Senator McCain.