Joe Biden: Experience With a Big Heart Is a Winning Combo

This moment, when Joe Biden talked about being a single parent unsure whether his sons would make it after his wife and daughter were tragically killed in a car accident?

Most real thing I've seen in politics in a long, long time.

When Biden was speaking about the folks he grew up with in Scranton and Wilmington -- their fear about how to pay for the heat in the winter, and groceries, and medical bills? You could feel the empathy pouring out of the television.

He wants to help those folks. They are his neighbors, whether they live next door or across the continent.

Sarah Palin has clearly been on camera enough to hit her marks, and deliver her rote, frenzied lines for that closing speech or to launch into yet another hyperactive filibuster. I give her credit for having a great camera presence, but so much of it felt scripted, manic and manufactured -- down to the newly caramelized color of her highlights that they toned down with a color rinse from the usual brassier version for the stage lighting tonight.