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Given I’ve been on vacation for the past eight days and needed a chance to decompress (or at least as much as I can), I largely avoided the Denver and St. Paul conventions and the news surrounding them (I defaulted to ESPN and ESPNews).  That said, I have to admit I was originally more than a little confused by Sen. John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin for his vice presidential candidate.  While I had heard of her, thanks to her upset of former Gov. Frank Murkowski and Bill Kristol plugging her on “Fox News Sunday,” I wasn’t sure how she’d do in front of a national audience (was she, as one of my traveling companions argued, the new Dan Quayle?).  I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to see how she would do (from TV Week)….

Palin’s TV Audience Hits 37 Mil, Rivaling Obama

By Michele Greppi

An estimated 37 million people watched Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for U.S. vice president, during her star-making debut at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, according to preliminary local data from Nielsen Media Research.

Gov. Palin’s audience eclipsed the 26 million who watched Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech on the second night of the Democratic convention last week and the 24 million who watched the speech delivered on night three by Gov. Palin’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden.

Gov. Palin’s numbers are comprised of viewers on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC. The Democratic convention was covered by two additional networks that aren’t airing the Republican convention: TV One and BET.

Gov. Palin’s audience was just a million viewers shy of Sen. Barack Obama’s convention record audience of 38 million on the Democrats’ closing night.

The audience for last night’s affair in St. Paul, Minn., also dwarf’s the total for the comparable hour of programming four years ago at the Republican convention.

How well she did is another question, but given the way analysts on CNN and CBS were crowing in their immediate reaction and how Joe Biden responded this morning in his various interviews, I’m guessing she did just fine.

Having watched the replay of her speech on replay on CNN, she accomplished the three things she needed to do.  First, she showed she could walk and read a teleprompter at the same time (not a high bar, but a minimum level for politicians).  Next, she showed she didn’t have horns, which you might have believed based on initial press accounts and op-eds from various left-wing feminists.  Finally, she showed she could be the play the attack dog role that vice presidential candidates are supposed to play, but do it with a sense of humor.

Admittedly, this wasn’t a high hurdle, but she did what she needed to do.  And she charmed many in the media.   My guess is that the McCain camp will use her to shore up the Republican base and potentially Republican-leaning supporters in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Iowa.  She’ll stick to a version of the convention speech until she can get up to speed on issues where previously she has had no previous level of expertise, such as foreign policy.  At the same time, she’ll concentrate on small and medium sized media markets and avoid the Sunday talking heads shows.  As she gets more comfortable, some of the restrictions will be removed.  Her next challenge will be her debate with Biden in a month.

FWIW, based on CBS News’ most recent polling (taken before her speech), Obama’s convention bounce is gone and the race is tied with 60 days to go.

Update: Contrary to previous conventions, the Republicans outdrew the Democrats in the ratings.