From Joy, a fellow mom in L.A. -- we moms GET IT. So does Joe.

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There’s an old Jewish proverb that says that the highest form of wisdom is kindness, and that’s exactly what Joe Biden gave us in last night’s vice-presidential debate.

People may talk about the law of diminished expectations for Sarah Palin, which somehow means that even when she falls on her face she doesn’t really fall on her face. But what I’d like to hear is a discussion about Biden’s generosity. The guy gets it. Dare I say it? Biden is a mensch.

It was clear from the get-go that Joe could have taken Sarah down, big time. He had the facts at his fingertips and the foreign policy expertise to whoop her in the behind. Instead, through her winks and “shout-outs” at the folks back home, he didn’t condescend. He smiled patiently. He spoke the truth about people at their kitchen tables, about global warming, about bringing our troops home from Iraq, about the need for a Barack Obama presidency. And, finally, he spoke from the heart.

Despite all the coaching, all the cockamamie talk of being a maverick, all the sound-bite answers from his opponent, Senator Biden did the unthinkable: he had a real moment. There was a catch in his throat and an emotional second when he shared with us the gravitas he knows and the deep longing that comes with being a parent. The grief, too, even this many years later over his first wife’s death.

For a politician to allow such a moment into the spectacle of a debate is extraordinary. It means the man understands what it is to be human, the paradox of living with loss and hope.

So, let the commentators and pundits carry on about how Sarah Palin saved herself and the Republicans last night, despite the fact that she was all fartootst about the mainstream media. Doesn’t her whining about the press remind you a little of Spiro Agnew’s complaints about the “nattering nabobs of negativism?”

In any case, the debate was really about Joe Biden’s emotional intelligence -- what my grandma would call the guy’s chachma. That’s Yiddish for wisdom.