Friday, August 29, 2008

The Speech

The person named Pat Buchanan who appears on MSNBC (obviously no relation to the old Pat Buchanan) called it "The Greatest Convention Speech of All Time" or something equally effusive. Oddly enough, I felt a tiny letdown when I finally watched the Obama stemwinder. It probably achieved what it was supposed to achieve in terms of vote-wrangling but I guess I was waiting for a little more poetry...some line that people would be quoting for decades after. If there was one in there, I missed it. For me, the best line of the convention was still John Kerry's "Talk about being for it before you were against it."

Then again, I'm not the audience that matters. Obama already has my vote — a vote, I might add, which won't make much difference since there's very little chance of him not carrying California. To the extent I could imagine myself in the position of an Undecided Voter, I think it may have been fine. He seemed smart and patriotic and passionate and — most important to some people, apparently — a good family man. He also managed to make a pretty good case that four years of McCain equals Years 9-12 of Bush-Cheney...and I don't believe that even most people who say they're happy with Bush want more of him.

So I was satisfied but that was about it. And in politics these days, that's not bad. I mean, I'll settle for just not being totally disappointed.

• Posted at 7:44 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Sorry if I'm spending a lot of blog time today on McCain's veep selection but it's what everyone around me seems to be discussing. So I thought I'd link you to an article by David Frum. He's pretty Conservative but he doesn't think it was a good pick.

• Posted at 7:25 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

Chris Matthews just cited an interesting statistic. The current Republican ticket is the first one in 36 years that hasn't had a Bush or a Dole on it.

• Posted at 4:35 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

A longtime correspondent, Dave Sikula, writes...

I both agree and disagree with you about Gov. Palin. On the one hand, she's a good choice for McCain because she helps solidify the base. On the other hand, she looked woefully out of her depth to me. Unless she shows more gravitas in the next couple of weeks, she'll resemble nothing so much as a PTA president going up against Putin or Ahmedinajad and be wildly overmatched.

Rumor has it she's a good debater, so she may show something against Biden (though, unlike you, I saw nothing in her performance this morning to indicate that — she seemed less like a governor than a local morning talk show host), but I agree that even PUMAs are going to be insulted at the thought that, if Hillary cracked the glass ceiling, this is the GOP's idea of the woman to break through. And if the Alaska trooper scandal comes to fruition — or if, god forbid, anything happens to McCain — the Republicans are toast.

If the Democrats play this right — and god knows they've shown an inability to do that over the past quarter century — and concentrate on her extremist views and lack of experience, they can marginalize her and defuse the whole female candidate thing.

As I say, she'll be good for McCain's standing in the party, but I didn't see a lot this morning that would draw in independents. Watching the speech this morning, the thing that struck me the most was how much of the media's love for McCain transferred right over to Palin. Absent any investigation of her record, she'll be fine.

Give McCain credit, though; they're not talking about Obama's speech any more.

Yeah, they're talking about how little experience his running mate has. That's going to help him?

Look, it's not exactly a secret I think McCain would be a dreadful president. The only area about him in which I'm undecided is whether he fooled people like me for a long time or whether he's a recent convert to the pernicious agenda he now represents. A friend of mine has spent the last year or so hurling "I told you so"s at me, arguing that all that maverick talk — all that "reaching across the aisle" and "standing up to his own party on principles" was fluff; that he only did that for show, when it didn't matter. It's tough for me to accept. I might still have a hard time voting against the John McCain of 1992 or thereabouts.

I don't think Sarah Palin's going to help him. I think she's going to hurt him and I'm not unhappy about that. Just putting the two tickets side by side, the Obama-Biden parlay looks so much more presidential now, not because Palin's a woman but because she looks like she was picked out of the audience at random. I'm sure she's a nice lady, a good mother, maybe even a fine first-term governor. But the selection of her simultaneously trivializes the valid concerns of the womens' movement and, of greater danger to us, the need to have someone in charge who can, as you say, deal with the Putins and the Ahmedinajads.

McCain just threw away his most powerful argument, which is that Obama was "not ready." Republicans seem to think that the Dems can't attack Palin's lack of experience without highlighting Obama's but it won't work like that. Democrats don't have to say anything. McCain just looks insincere now for having complained that Obama didn't have foreign policy experience, hadn't been overseas enough, etc. If you take the "experience" issue completely off the table, that helps Obama.

What with so much happening — the conventions, Gustav, announcements, etc. — I think the polls are going to be wildly unrepresentative of the electorate for a few weeks. But once things settle down a bit and everyone wraps their brains around the idea that these are the tickets, I think the consensus will be that McCain made the wrong choice.

• Posted at 12:17 PM · LINK

Still Watching

Not a bad speech. Interesting that she has a son heading for Iraq at about the same time that Joe Biden has a son heading for Iraq. She'll probably make the Republican base happy except for the fact that they'll fret her inexperience weakens McCain's assertions that Obama doesn't have enough.

I wonder if they did much (or even any) polling on this. There couldn't have been much or her name would have been on some reporter's list of possible running mates. Did everyone else test so poorly that McCain figured she wouldn't do any worse for him? Or did he just not think that kind of polling research matters? If the latter, good for him.

I don't think it's going to help the G.O.P. ticket to pick up disenfranchised Hillary supporters. First off, I don't think there are as many of them as people think, especially after the last few days. Also, it's going to come off as tokenism to a lot of folks. Women don't want a woman to be picked because she's a woman. They want her not to be disqualified because she's a woman. Would Palin even be on the long list, let alone the short list, if she were male?

The best thing about the pick so far is that the Talking Heads of Television have no idea what to make of it. All the chatter is like, "Well, this is a risky pick but it could prove to be a master stroke." Translation: "When do we get to see some polls on her?"

Well, maybe the best thing is about how this is probably pissing off Ted Stevens. We're going to hear a lot about how Palin stopped his "bridge to nowhere" project. The G.O.P. is throwing their Senatorial candidate under the dog sled.

• Posted at 10:16 AM · LINK

Still Watching

Okay, he just introduced her and a hall full of people who never heard of Sarah Palin until they got up this morning is on its feet, cheering for her. And out walks Tina Fey.

• Posted at 9:30 AM · LINK

Just Watching

I'm watching TV, waiting for John McCain to appear to formally announce his veep pick. If I were staging this event, I don't think I'd have brought high school cheerleaders in to warm up the crowd.

There's a big banner up that says "Country First" and people are waving signs that say that. McCain will probably deliver his customary disclaimer about how he doesn't question Barack Obama's patriotism.

I'm channel-hopping and all the pundits are saying the selection of Palin was a "daring choice." I think that means they want to see some polling data before they say whether it was a good idea or not. On the other hand, they all seem to think that the referee should step in now and stop the Biden-Palin debate before it happens.

McCain's speaking. I'm going to go listen.

• Posted at 9:20 AM · LINK

Another Thought

It's kinda nice to think that this country is about to either elect a black man as president or a woman as vice-president.

• Posted at 9:10 AM · LINK

Friday Morning

Just woke up to hear that the G.O.P. ticket is McCain and Palin. I'll bet I'm not the only person who'd barely heard of the lady in question and who thought immediately of Michael Palin walking into the Vice-Presidential Debate and asking, "Is this the right room for an argument?"

Well, it's always enjoyable when all the news analysts turn out to be wrong. When I went to bed, it absolutely had to be either Pawlenty or Romney.

• Posted at 8:18 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's a minute and a half of Steve Allen doing a silly sportscaster character on one of his shows. Just watch.

• Posted at 12:29 AM · LINK