It was just a month ago when John McCain introduced Sarah Palin to the world outside Alaska. Early polls suggested that she could lift the Republican campaign with her youth and femininity. But Palin has failed to perform. After her very successful speech at the Republican National convention, she has almost been sheltered from the media, giving very few interviews compared to her rival, Joe Biden.

The times when the Republicans have let her speak, it hasn’t gone very well. John McCain was forced to retract some of her comments on Pakistan, and her performance on ABC with Charlie Gibson and with CBS’s Katie Couric has since taken the shine of this newcomer. Concerns are now raised about her maturity and her ability to sit in the county’s second highest office, not to mention the highest should anything happen to her mentor. A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that Palin’s unfavorable ratings have increased by nine percentage points. That is quite a lot.

Tomorrow is the first VP debate, and Palin is currently undergoing a debate crash course in order to have a hope in hell of coming out just in Joe Biden’s vicinity. He is skilled and experienced when it comes to debates and the media, and many are expecting Thursday’s to be a steep and harsh learning curve for the young Alaskan governor.