Why the vice presidential candidates should rein in their inner Chatty Cathy

While loads of commentary on tonight’s big vice presidential debate has focused on what the candidates should say, just as important will be what they don’t say.

Katie Couric’s extended interviews exposed Sarah Palin because Couric knew when to stop talking. And the governor of Alaska didn’t.

The CBS anchor listened and nodded patiently. John McCain’s running mate did the rest, producing what henceforward should be known as Palindrones. (n. pl. – A politician’s run-on pronouncements, making almost as little sense forward as they would if repeated backward.)

Palin’s disjointed discourse dominated the news in recent days. But it could not – and should not – provide a free pass to Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden – another master of the art of talking oneself into a corner.

Palin is not the only would-be No. 2 who needs practice in the art of leaving well enough alone. Going back to his 1988 run for president, Biden demonstrated a bad habit of embellishing his involvement in important events. And that habit has come to the fore in news reports from the last two days.

Fox News was first Tuesday to resurrect Biden’s statement from a Democratic debate in July 2007, when the exuberant senator from Delaware tried to buff up his Iraq bona fides. The then-presidential candidate said he had been “inside the Green Zone, where I’ve been seven times, and shot at.”

Biden later conceded in an interview with the Hill newspaper that the shot amounted to an explosion or projectile landing outside a building where he was staying in the heavily fortified compound in downtown Baghdad. Unsettling, no doubt, but as Biden acknowledged: “It’s not like I had someone holding a gun to my head.”

More recently, as noted by both Fox News and the Associated Press, Biden has talked about how a helicopter he and other senators were riding in was “forced down” high in the mountains of Afghanistan last February. Although Biden never said so, his account might lead some voters to believe enemy fire brought the copter down. In fact, it landed because of a heavy snow storm and the delegation had to drive the rest of the way to its destination.

Those stories rang a bell, so I reopened “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s fabulously detailed account of the 1988 presidential race. And sure enough, there was the story of Biden (then 44, Palin’s age) winning audiences with his stirring account of marching for civil rights in the 1960s.

There was one problem, as Biden’s aides tried to caution him (to no avail) – he hadn’t really been active in civil rights marches.

The aspiring president forgave himself at the time by explaining that he had led a walkout by the high school basketball team when a diner would not serve a black teammate. But, as Cramer wrote, that wasn’t the impression Biden left on audiences.

The Associated Press report Wednesday reminded that Biden’s tendency to exaggerate came with a corollary problem – pilfering phrases from other politicians, including then-British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. That helped sink Biden’s 1988 presidential bid.

I called Cramer on Wednesday. He said he had been following the campaign on television, and guessed that Biden would have less trouble keeping himself on an even keel in tonight’s debate than he might have when he was a young man.

“Back then, he was revved up all the time. He had to convince himself, more than others, that he was in that league,” Cramer said. “He is a lot calmer now. He doesn’t have to prove he is a big deal. He is a big deal.”

Biden recently waxed on about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leadership during the Great Depression, a time before he was born. That may explain, but not excuse, the senator’s recollection of FDR addressing the nation on television (a device not yet available at the time) when the stock market crashed (an event that came three years before Roosevelt’s presidency).

Biden, no doubt, has been flogged by handlers to be direct and succinct. Palin’s team already has been smart enough to ask for a debate format with shorter answer times.

Maybe the best advice for both candidates is: When in doubt, cede the balance of your time.

 james.rainey@latimes.com