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PLEASE PASS THIS ON!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>
<No more Mr. Nice Guy from Joe Biden or anyone else.>
Source/Letters: <http://www.theatlantic.com/a/feedback.mhtml>
Link: <http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/sarah_palin.php
>
Sarah Palin
04 Sep 2008 12:05 am
Twice in modern history very strong convention speeches have elevated
politicians to an entirely different level of future potential and
prominence. One, of course, was Barack Obama's keynote at the convention in
Boston four years ago. The other, which I remember watching as a schoolboy
Goldwaterite, was Ronald Reagan's speech supporting Goldwater at the San
Francisco convention in 1964.
I don't think Sarah Palin's speech will be in that category.
She passed the "expectations" test -- despite coming after the very
effective Rudy Giuliani --and brought the house down with cheers. She had a
number of strong, biting lines -- including the one about John McCain being
the only person on the ticket who had literally fought for the country,
Here are the potential longer-term problems:
- No more Mr. Nice Guy. The speech was surprisingly negative and mocking.
You can see why Rush Limbaugh has been such a fan of hers: if these words
were delivered by someone older, less attractive, and male, they could have
come straight from a Limbaugh radio monologue. The upside here is making
"the base" much more enthusiastic than it was before. Potential drawback:
having taken this tone, she's exposed herself to more direct, aggressive
attack by the Dems than she has received so far. (So far, the Dems have been
able to stand back and let the press do the anti-Palin work.) No more Mr.
Nice Guy from Joe Biden or anyone else.
- The Hillary factor. The day-one theorizing about her selection was that
she might draw some disaffected female Hillary supporters. I can see how the
speech would motivate some previously-tepid conservatives. It is hard for me
to imagine a lot of HRC Democrats -- either long-time feminists or people
mainly worried about economic trends -- being attracted by the content or
the tone of the speech.
- Fact checking. The speech took the "press is the enemy" theme to an
extreme in dropping in a bunch of claims and factlets that the McCain team
knows will be immediately picked apart by the press. For instance, her
claimed opposition to earmarks and "bridge to nowhere." I guess they
figure, they'll stick with their side of the story and say "there you go
again!" when the press points out errors and holes.
- Abqaiq. The foreign policy grace notes in the speech, including
pronouncing the phrase "Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia," struck me like
George W. Bush's dropping in the names of foreign leaders during his 2000
campaign -- as a way of showing that he knew them. This doesn't remove the
peril of what the first actual press conference on international issues, or
the first debate with Joe Biden, might hold.
- Nothing off limits. Barack Obama has used his family as a prop from time
to time -- most recently, bringing the charming girls onto the stage at the
end of his convention speech. That's life in politics; everybody does it to
some degree.Very few politicians do it as all-out as Sarah Palin just did,
from citing the disabilities of her youngest child as part of her resume to
including the shotgun groom of her elder daughter. I can't recall any
spectacle comparable to Baby Trig being passed from Cindy McCain, to Trig's
7-year-old sister, to Palin herself when she ended the speech. Her husband
looks charming, I have to say. From this point on it will be hard for her to
declare anything about her personal or family life out-of-bounds.
- Throw the bums out. The policy/content heart of the speech was the idea
that the old ways and old gang in DC need to be shaken up. This is another
doubling-down bet on the base rather than an appeal to independents, because
it depends on people not stopping to say: Wait a minute, what party has been
in charge in DC for most of the last eight years? Where exactly are McCain's
policies really different from Bush's?
To return to the main theme: both Reagan in 1964 and Obama in 2004 were
effective because, apart from their personal skills, they added something to
their party's constituency that had not been there before. Reagan began
recruiting the "Reagan Democrats," starting with white Southerners. Obama
tried to recruit people tired of divisive partisanship.
Sarah Palin, at least tonight, did not seem interested in bringing anyone
new into the fold. A speech that was great in the convention hall. We'll see
how it affects the electoral lineup.
Copyright © 2008 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>
Judy Reed
Liberal, Progressive, Secular, Green, & Humane
This is distributed for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.
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