I thought Sarah Palin won—because she (far) exceeded expectations, because she showed considerable suppleness (countering Joe Biden's statement that the commanding general said that John McCain's surge strategy would not work in Afghanistan), and spotlighted her winning personality. She showed the same smiling confidence that she did in her acceptance speech September 3 and that was missing in her interview with Katie Couric. Biden's performance was by and large acceptable, but he made some significant misstatements, notably on the Constitution. Article I of the Constitution is not about the executive branch, as Biden said, but about the legislative branch, in which Biden has served for 35 years. And the vice president doesn't preside over the Senate just in cases of ties; he (or she) is entitled to preside over the Senate at any time. Imagine the uproar from Mainstream Media if Palin had made such errors! She does seem to be taking a little flak over her seemingly bizarre statement that she would seek more constitutional powers for the vice presidency. But, as you may remember, Lyndon Johnson, one of our most experienced vice presidents, sought to continue to attend Democratic Caucus meetings after he was elected vice president. He was hastily disinvited.

Contrary to widespread expectations in Washington and on Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's financial bailout/rescue package was not agreed to at the White House meeting that started at 4 p.m. Thursday. The meeting included the congressional and committee leaders of both parties and the administration's top financial officials, plus two presidents—George W. Bush and either Barack Obama or John McCain.

Picking up on my Frozen North post, Dan at Gay Patriot argues that the McCain-Palin ticket has a chance to pick up one electoral vote from Maine's Second Congressional District. (Maine, like Nebraska, assigns two electoral votes to the ticket that carries the state and one each to the ticket that carries each congressional district.) He notes helpfully that Maine's moose hunting season occurs this week and also October 13-18.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Congress, according to my American Enterprise Institute colleague, Kevin Hassett. His Bloomberg column links to a prescient 2005 article by another AEIer, Peter Wallison. And here is Wallison's latest, coauthored by AEI colleague Charles Calomiris. All three are well worth reading.

Stanley Kurtz has been investigating the Chicago Annenberg Challenge files in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle, and he has reported on his results in the Wall Street Journal. I have written before on Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber, who claims to have set bombs at the U.S. Capitol, and Kurtz notes that Obama has tried to play down his long and close association with Ayers. Ayers was the cofounder of the CAC, and Obama was chairman of the board; Kurtz makes it clear that Obama worked more closely with Ayers than previously suggested. But mostly Kurtz concentrates on what the CAC actually did. There are two serious issues here: Mainstream media have shown an almost complete lack of interest in both of them.

During financial disaster week, Barack Obama took the lead over John McCain in national polls, by 2.3 percent in the Real Clear Politics average. But the reshuffling of the political deck seems to have opened up more states for McCain and have closed off some states for Obama, specifically, in the northern tier of the country: call it the Frozen North. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington seem to be in play now. Preconvention polls showed Obama well ahead in each; postconvention polls show him leading by only a few points. That's 31 electoral votes on the table. And North Dakota, Montana, and Alaska seem to be out of play. Obama was competitive there in pre-convention polls, though there weren't many of them; he's well behind in postconvention polls. That's nine electoral votes off the table. Net advantage to McCain: 40 electoral votes. The Obama campaign has evidently reached the same conclusion: It is closing its North Dakota offices and the sending staffers to Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the 500 plunge of the Dow, the government takeover of AIG—all these have got the presidential candidates talking about the economy. But both Barack Obama and John McCain have been vague about their solutions. And for good reason. Our economic problems are concentrated in the finance sector, and that's the part of the economy the average voter knows least about.

Moreover, the political blame is widely dispersed. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Democrats and Republicans in Congress have all pushed policies to increase home ownership. The problem is that many marginal home buyers were unable to pay their mortgages when house prices fell. Another problem: Under a long-standing regulatory regime, the firms that rated packages of securitized mortgages were paid by the sellers rather than the buyers. Some of those mortgage securities turned out to be worth less than buyers thought.