Month: September 2008

11.08 pm. Quite a deflation after the drama of last night with the sportscaster-governor. It made me realize how much I am still fond of this guy. And also clearer about why this is not his moment. The specifics were very vague, and the entire presentation based on biography, nostalgia and a kind of strained, exhausted mildness. His performance at Saddleback was much, much better. He seemed very tired to me. 11.07 pm. This country song is quite horrible. 11.05 pm. And then a final sudden, almost surprising rally of energy. He seemed to me to have more energy and passion in the last two minutes than the rest of the speech combined. 11.02 pm. I love the use of the feminine pronoun for a country. Very traditional and always moving. But it does age him. He seems elegiac to me right now, almost wistful. 10.58 pm. Ending with his war story. It’s a beautiful story – about the limits of independence. Which again is a little odd for a conservative. Aren’t conservatives the ones who highlight the joys of being on your own – especially Western conservatives? But it remains beautiful because the story is beautiful and noble. I’m just not sure it is a reason to vote for a president. 10.55 pm. An appeal for unity, not taking credit, bipartisan, etc. And a pledge for transparency and accountability. My worry is that he does not have the management skills to pull this off. That’s not his skill-set. 10.52 pm. A much less bellicose appeal on foreign policy here. An appeal to his experience with foreign leaders and the military and a strong endorsement of peace. No real tub-thumping. Obviously, he’s worried, especially after the impulsive and reckless Palin pick, that he might be playing into the unpredictable and volatile part of his personality.

10.50 pm. Reassembling the Russian empire? C’mon. Yes, Putin is a thug. But not like Brezhnev.

10.49 pm. The differences between him and Obama on energy independence are not that great, are they?

10.46 pm. Drilling for oil gets the biggest applause. This is why I can’t feel at home in this party. I mean: I’m actually open to this policy and agree with McCain on the all-of-the-above approach, including nuclear – but this obsession with more domestic oil just seems weird to me. I guess I’m a cosmopolitan.

10.44 pm. I’d love to take on the teacher’s unions and expand school choice. Why do I doubt McCain would get it done? Or doubt that a president can do much about it? He works my conservative amygdala with bashing unions. But it still seems tired and stale somehow.

10.42 pm. A policy: helping people get retrained in community colleges. Well, we do that already, right? And I’m not sure it’s fair to say that Obama wants to shut us off from the global economy.

10.39 pm. His speech makes me feel a lot better as a depressed old-fashioned conservative. But it’s striking how all the things that make me feel good seems to go down flat with this crowd.

10.36 pm. "We lost their trust." "Both parties made government bigger." McCain is the first person to acknowledge the reality of the last eight years. Good for him!

10.34 pm. He’s fighting for you! Is this John Kerry in 2004?

10.30 pm. We have half an hour left of this convention and I still don’t know what he is proposing to do.

10.28 pm. I’m sorry but when he speaks of Palin he seems as if he’s praising a very promising student.

10.26 pm. "Stand on your side and fight for your future." Did McCain just use a Shrum classic?

10.24 pm. Two disruptions from what appear to be anti-war activists. Decently handled by McCain.

10.22 pm. Perfunctory about the Bushes; graceful toward Obama, even if the crowd couldn’t respond.

10.17 pm. That green backdrop needs to go. It reminds one of that other speech.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

Mickey Kaus:

What we’re witnessing, I think, is the death of a media paradigm that we lived with comfortably for, oh, the last year or two. And John Edwards is to blame!… The avalanche of questions to which [Steve] Schmidt is being subjected–and his discomfort–suggests that the MSM is in the process of shifting to a new role, in which it aggressively investigates and discusses rumors rather than waiting for the industrious blogosphere to force its hand.

Industrious? Moi?

The difference between the Edwards story and the Palin story is that when the Edwards story gained traction, Edwards was already out of the race.

All the talk about Palin has risen to the surface because of the terrifying thought that she could technically be president next January and we only have two months to find out who on earth she is. And Edwards was a national figure and former vice-presidential candidate. Palin has been several time zones away in the Alaskan wilderness. But the combo of the Enquirer‘s Edwards cred and the astonishing rumors – new and old – that are percolating about Palin makes one realize that the GOP establishment has just decided to double-down on a massive gamble. God help them. And the Palins.

"Does John McCain know he’s leading a spiritual revival?" – Kathryn-Jean Lopez, National Review.

My guess is not.

It’s actually quite simple. We’ve had three truncated days of the RNC and I cannot say I have learned any over-arching policy argument from the podium. We’ve heard endless jibes at Obama and countless calls to drill for more oil. None of this addresses the serious policy issues in this campaign. I don’t agree with Rick Davis who believes this election is about personalities, not issues.

So what McCain needs to do is tell us what he will do for the economy, for energy independence, for healthcare, for the debt, for Iraq and Afghanistan. If he doesn’t, it’s over. More to the point: it should be over.

Look: I like the man and have written countless columns in his defense over the years. I loathe what has happened to the GOP under Bush, as I think he does. But his general campaign has been a horrible Rovian tactic so far, not a serious program for reform. I’d like this campaign to be a credit to him. So far, it has been a disaster. I don’t think he can rescue himself form the Palin pick, but if he can, he will have to start tonight.

Bob Reich explains the rigors of becoming a cabinet member. Whatever you think of Palin, McCain has just demonstrated in his first ever executive decision that he does not have the temperament to be president of the United States. He’s too impulsive, emotional and reckless for a period in history like this. Many of us worried about this for a while. Now we know.

Gabriel Sherman looks at the role the National Enquirer plays in politics:

The National Enquirer, with its checkbook journalism and its focus on the salacious and the untoward, is hardly grist for journalism school classes. It has also gotten some stories spectacularly wrong, on August 1 settling a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum after it incorrectly reported in 2006 that Ted Kennedy had fathered a love child of his own. But the paper also has a remarkable record in driving the mainstream media’s coverage of political figures, from Gary Hart and Donna Rice to Jesse Jackson’s love child to the current Edwards gotcha, the product of a scrappiness and enterprise that even the Times should envy.

Yesterday, the McCain camp threatened to sue the Enquirer over what might be a story in the upcoming edition.

Once the reality – not the propaganda – of the Palin picks sinks in further, who knows? Pretty steady at RCP and Pollster as well.

Since the GOP is now primarily a religious organization, it’s interesting to look at the theology of the brand of Republicanism that Palin comes from. Assemblies of God Republicans believe in sixteen fundamental truths, outlined here, including the Rapture. Since the GOP now holds that there can be no distinction between politics and religion, and that presidential debates need to be held in churches and moderated by pastors, it would be helpful to ask if she shares the views of the pastor of the church she grew up. To be specific: does she believe that Alaska will be a refuge in the "end-times" for the saved of the lower 48 states? He said that right in front of her. She didn’t seem in any way fazed.

One thing I didn’t know is that the Assemblies have historically been a pacifist denomination, although they allow individual churches to take different positions on war and peace. When Palin said that she wanted an "exit plan" from Iraq in December 2006, was that view affected by her theology?

Governor Palin is going to have to hire more lawyers. She is now facing a second ethics investigation in Alaska:

The GOP candidate for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, may be facing yet another ethics investigation back in her home state of Alaska. An ethics complaint obtained by NBC News was filed Wednesday by the police officers union in Alaska, requesting a probe into possible wrongdoing by the governor or her office. It was brought on behalf of state trooper Mike Wooten, an ex-brother-in-law of Palin who is at the center of the "Troopergate" scandal.

The complaint alleges that the governor or her staff may have have improperly disclosed information from Wooten’s personnel records. The complaint alleges "criminal penalties may apply."

John Cyr, director of the union that filed the complaint, told NBC News, "It seems obvious to us somebody has improperly accessed [Wooten’s] personnel file."

Weigel reports on the anti-convention.