A Political Glimpse from Ireland

Sarah Palin

No doubt that John McCain did a pretty good job of sucking up all the oxygen on Friday by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate.  Of course, much of that was because the mainstream media continues to be both idiotic and gullible.  It’s not that it wasn’t a news story, it’s just that the media was attempting to act like the choice came from nowhere.  I had been hearing Palin’s name on the margins of possible VPs all summer, and the politics of the choice were so totally naked that it was almost embarrassing.  I can’t speak for how her selection will play over the next three months, but every woman I’ve spoken to has reacted the same way: "How dumb does he think we are?"  And that’s before they realize how totally unqualified she is for the office. 

The GOP has been attacking Obama’s 12 years in government as being insufficient to qualify for the presidency (and that’s leaving aside his Harvard education, his time as editor of the Harvard Law Review, and the years he spent in public service in Chicago long before he was ever elected to office), but now McCain has placed a woman with less than two years of executive experience a heart beat away from the presidency.  Ezra chalks this choice up to a refusal on McCain’s part that he might actually die in office (an insane assumption for any president to make when choosing their VP, even more so for a 72 year old man with a history of cancer).

In the longterm, I think this choice is going to hurt McCain.  It brings two things to the forefront:  McCain’s age, and McCain’s judgment.  His age because it’s clear that Palin is not ready for the presidency should he die in office, and his judgment because it’s clear he was willing to put politics ahead of the country (not to mention he had only spoken to her personally twice before picking her).  I can’t view Palin as anything other than a cynical polling data pick.  McCain thinks he’ll capture disaffected Hillary voters this way, which is frankly insulting to women everywhere.

Over at the New York Times, Frank Rich sums it up nicely:

The latest good luck for the Democrats is that the McCain campaign was just as bamboozled as the press by the false Hillary narrative. McCain was obviously itching to choose his pal Joe Lieberman as his running mate. A onetime Democrat who breaks with the G.O.P. by supporting abortion rights might have rebooted his lost maverick cred more forcefully than Palin, who is cracking this particular glass ceiling nearly a quarter-century after the Democrats got there first. Lieberman might have even been of some use in roiling the Obama-Hillary-Bill juggernaut that will now storm through South Florida.

The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

The best reaction McCain will have to this pick is over the next week or so.  Beyond being unqualified for the presidency, Palin also suffers from never having had to run a truly hard fought campaign.  That’s kind of hard to do in a state with only 600,000 people.  She’s completely unprepared for the scrutiny the national spotlight will bring.  And there’s no way she can hope to compete with Joe Biden during the VP debates.  We still have to wait awhile to see how this choice plays out, but I have a hard time imagining a long term gain from it, especially with the minor scandal in Alaska, concerning her termination of the state’s top law enforcement official.

Sister Mary John Cristobal

Sister Mary is going to the convention! The Guamian delegation had a spare set of alternate’s credentials, and the delegation agreed she should join them. She’s very excited; it’s her first time really getting involved in the political process. Attending a national convention gets your feet wet in a very big way.

Democratic Convention: Final Review

The main focus of this post will be to provided a more thorough review of Sen. Obama’s speech from last night.  But first, I want to talk about the video introduction that procedded it, a very personal, disarming, humanizing video which provided the viewer a sense of intimacy with the candidate who has continually suffered the baseless analysis that he is a mystery to voters.  In fact, I felt the introductory video to Obama’s speech was so effective that it deserves to be pushed into viral distribution.  It has all the proper qualities for that.  It’s a new way of looking at Obama, not with any lofty rhetoric, but as a man telling his story and the story of his family, revealing in one fell swoop those events that influenced him at a very early age.  I think the video works on all levels.  The narration is fantastic, carrying just the right tone, rhythm and cadence. 

For their part, Michelle and Barack Obama talk about their courtship the way a couple might tell such a story to close friends and family while they still manage to tie it into the values that Obama holds, and by doing so, the reasons he’s now running for president.  To see this video get lost to the bowels of the internet, never to be seen again would be a crime.  So I’m reposting it here, and encourage anyone who missed it to watch it in its entirety, and to then email it along to your friends, or post it on your Facebook profile.

Immediately following the video, Barack Obama took to the stage to deliver what may have been the most important speech of his political career, overshadowed only by the 2004 keynote address which introduced him to the American public and sent his star soaring into the heavens.

It was widely agreed that Obama needed to eschew the lofty rhetoric which has carried him so far, and bring his vision back down to earth by talking about the concerns and needs of the struggling American.  He did this beautifully.  Perhaps the real shocker was that Obama began his speech, following the obligatory thanks to all those who had spoken this week,  with a blistering attack on George W. Bush, John McCain, and the conservative philosophy of governance.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder
for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching
your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to
drive, credit cards, bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s
beyond your reach.

These challenges are not all of government’s
making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken
politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

<snip>

[N]ext week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of
George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third.  We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight.

I think last line is just brilliant.  It’s pithy, memorable, and continues the effort to tie McCain as closely to Bush as possible.  But Obama didn’t stop there, he continued to go on the offense, hammering center McCain for nearly a full ten minutes:

Senator
McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say
about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than
90 percent of the time?  I don’t know about you, but I am not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.

<snip>

Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know.  Why
else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a
year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for
big corporations and oil companies, but not one penny of tax relief to
more than 100 million Americans?  How else could he offer a
health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an
education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college,
or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your
retirement?

It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care; it’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.

<snip>

In Washington, they call this the "Ownership Society," but what it
really means is that you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck,
you’re on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You’re on
your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,
even if you don’t have boots. You are on your own.  Well,
it’s time for them to own their failure. It’s time for us to change
America. And that’s why I’m running for president of the United States.

Obama went on to attack McCain even on his supposed strengths, hammering him on his refusal to target Osama bin Laden, despite having earlier claimed to be willing to chase him "to the gates of Hell."  It was an opening that I imagine would have surprised most anyone.  It’s not usually the candidate’s place to go move so quickly and viciously against his opponent.

After spending a while highlighting the failures of the currect administration, Obama then set his sights on laying out specific policies he wished to pursue as president, and made a move to tell the stories of struggling Americans.  He even compared Bush’s record to that of his predecessor, a move I’m sure made Bill Clinton happy.

Basically, Obama did everything with his speech last night that he needed to do.  Kept his lofty rhetoric low key in order to talk in concrete terms about what he wanted to do.  Helped to salve relations with Bill Clinton by talking up the former president’s achievements.  Took aim at his opponent, scoring many succuessful hits with lines designed to make perfect sound bytes.  And he topped this all off by returning to the theme that has served him so well — that there is no red America or blue America, only the United States of America.  He even spoke to the hot button issues like abortion and gun control, highlighting the common ground that conservatives and liberals alike should be able to agree on:

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.

[G]un ownership may be different for hunters in rural
Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but
don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s
out of the hands of criminals.

There’s little he could have done to make the speech better.  At 42 minutes long, it probably could have been trimmed a bit, but I have no argument with the content that was in it. 

Now that it’s all over, I can say that I was largely pleased with this convention.  Hillary, Bill, Kerry, and Biden all did excellent jobs at giving unequivocal praise to our presidential candidate, and Hillary deserves special thanks for her speech which was everything you could have hoped for.  A clear, ringing endorsement of Barack Obama, combined with a re-telling of her own campaign — the reasons she ran, and the reasons her supporters must come on board to the Barack administration.  The only major disappointment I had with the high-profile speakers was the keynote address given by Mark Warner, which was a total misfire to me.  Didn’t bash McCain, hardly talked up Obama, and gave a call to bi-partisanship that was frankly naive.  Bi-partisanship is far easier to achieve in state legislatures than it is in Washington.

But all in all, not a bad convention.  Certainly better than 2004.  Probably better than 2000.

P.S.  As always, don’t forget you can promote any of our posts here by clicking the Share This link at the bottom of each post.  It allows you to use nearly every content gate way site — Digg, del.i.cious, etc. — or simply email it to your friends or post it to Facebook.  We always appreciate the extra effort from our readers to help promote the site.  Especially in this case, when we’re trying to help launch the Obama bio video into viral distribution.

Police with a sense of humor

I saw these Minneapolis police officers outside the Doubletree Park Place hotel. They’re accompanying the delegates to the convention kick-off party Sunday night.

I asked them, “Aren’t you guys supposed to be torturing diabetic protestors?”

One replied, “No, that’s tomorrow. Didn’t you get the schedule change?”

Bad news for the protestors

Because of the expected landfall of Hurricane Gustav, RNC activities have been greatly curtailed for Monday, the first day of the convention. President Bush and vice-President Cheney won’t be here at all, and Senator McCain may not attend either.

The first day’s schedule has been cut from nine hours to two and one half. Convention organizers are scrambling to change arrangements, and some delegates are flying home.

This is bad news for the protestors. The less that’s going on at the Xcel Center, the less media coverage they will get for their antics. Some events are still going on; the Indymedia coverage carries its usual semi-hysterical tone.