Coming off the high of watching my beloved New York Giants stomp on their heated rival Washington Redskins, I found it impossible to focus on John McCain’s speech. He’s the worst orator I’ve ever seen win a nomination of a major party. Dan Quayle gave much better speeches. Lloyd Bentsen gave better speeches. Joe Lieberman gave better speeches. Ralph Nader gives a better speech. John McCain is terrible and he’s boring. I had to watch some of the post-debate coverage to even learn that he allegedly broke with the Bush administration and his colleagues in the Capitol Building. I had the sound on during his speech. I was looking at the screen. I didn’t absorb any message at all except that John McCain was once captured in a war and that he suffered terribly as a result. He didn’t even manage to offend me. He didn’t even manage to make me feel uncomfortable. He was simply there…on the screen…mouthing words that signified nothing.
But he did actually deliver a speech with clauses and sentences and applause lines. There’s even a transcript. Chris Matthews seemed to be overly impressed with this part.
MCCAIN: I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost — we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger.
We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties — and Senator Obama — passed
another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust when we valued our power over our principles.We’re going to change that.
(APPLAUSE)
We’re going to recover the people’s trust by standing up again to the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is
going to get back to basics.
As for me, I was watching this part of the speech and I had the volume on, but I didn’t even notice it. It meant nothing to me. It was such obvious bullshit that it didn’t even register as something significant. When I read it in the transcript it had only marginally more meaning. It means that John McCain is going to run against Washington, including his own party and his own party’s leadership over the last eight years. But John McCain can’t deliver that message. Maybe Sarah Palin will be more successful with it, but John McCain can’t get away with it.
And so, my friends, it will just be a slow, painful, offensive nine weeks before we can say goodbye to John McCain. And we’ll also say goodbye to so many of his colleagues that he is now condemning with false rhetoric.
Now, I know what purgatory is like. You have to listen to speakers like John McCain for millennia on end. Arrrggghhhh.
Jeffrey Toobin:
Former Bush Speechwriter Michael Gerson:
Note the music in the background during this balloon drop moment… Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Last used in The Sopranos final scene. Very fitting for the closing of the Republican National Convention.
I’m just watching it now, and I have never been so sick. Anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-education, anti-union, pro-drilling, anti-environment, oh my effing gods, it just goes on and on. Honestly, I thought it couldn’t get worse than Bush Jr., but seeing that introductory video showed me it can get oh so worse.
At least they can’t fill a stadium.
…And lets’ not forget the obligitory SCARE VIDEO warm up earlier in the evening. Totally tasteless and partisan.
A comment from Keith Olbermann at the end. Do you feel a “Special Comment” coming on?
There were so many Frankfurt moments, but the one that got me is talking about bringing down the deficit, particularly when one considers that the policies he credits as core Republican conservative principles are precisely the policies that have been in place for the last eight years.
I think the visuals make the difference. McCain is not somebody you want to watch. I began by listening to the speech on the radio, and there it came off as okay – probably because there was nothing else for me to focus on (I was taking a walk in the neighborhood at night). For the last 15 minutes, I watched him on television – this was what many think was the best part of his speech – and I was unimpressed.
Listening, McCain came off as presenting various “blocks” on policy or biography. The “maverick/fight-Washington” was rote, and easy to ignore. The occasional policy part – especially on the economy – was clear and simplified, and largely Republican orthodoxy. (I’m amused the way McCain refers to free-trade/globalization as “opening markets abroad”, like it doesn’t open markets here to cheap goods from low-wage economies.)
But setting aside the critique about McCain’s speaking style, there was no real “change” in what McCain was proposing policy-wise. Except perhaps for his claim to be a reformer who will clean up the joint. But the problem there was that he didn’t present a plan of any sort (e.g. “I’ll set up a bi-partisan commission to look into the abuses at X, and force Congress to implement its recommendations.)
I wish someone would ask McCain where the WMDs are.
I also wish someone would ask Dubya why he didn’t show up in person.
As I’ve said, the speech was stolen from Bush 2000, school choice, bi-partisanship, cutting taxes and spending, reforming Washington and conservative dog whistle stuff. It was the same kind of “change” Bush ran on after Clinton.
And finally, in front of America, he jumped the shark on the POW thing.
Worst speech I’ve heard in years.
I will preface this comment by saying I do not like Joe Scarbourough and this will not earn him any brownie point in my book, but he just said to Rick Davis:
What is you gave a speech and half of America slept through half of it?
It’s a start, I suppose. Or maybe Joe’s just trying to get back his “mavrick-ness”
Hate to say it, but Pennsyltucky is all atwitter over McCain-Palin this morning. I am am wading through it in shock. These people have no long term memory.
ALL of the Republicans and many, many of the former fence sitters around here are professing that they are fully on board with this McCain-Palin ticket. Palin was very well received in this area. She is their Obama. And it’s not what she said necessarily, it’s how she said it. They have bought the marketing hook, line and sinker. I see the same glazed looked and total dissonance that was present in 2004. They are over the edge. And I don’t think there is any getting them back.
I just had an email from someone a little west of me here in PA, panicking about the stupidity of her neighbors.
What part of “Bush sucks and so does McCain” is so hard for people to understand? And why is it so easy to make people forget everything by waving a bright shiny Caribou Barbie at them?
The capacity of human beings, creatures with the most evolved and complex brains on the planet, to ignore what right before their eyes is truly baffling to me. The inability of people to see the logical disconnect being presented to them is almost beyond belief. For McCain to stand there and present himself as the agent of change in Washington, vilifying everything that has occurred under the watch of his own party and having people buy it is mind boggling.
“Elect me, I will fix everything my party has screwed up”
Tom Shales at the Washington Post put it quite clearly.
I don’t know about your area, but around here I believe most of the independents who will eventually vote for McCain will do so for only one reason……….RACE. I hear it all the time. If you talk long enough about the election to almost anyone who claims to be an independent, 9 times out of 10 their misgivings about Obama will come down to the fact that he is black. They really know very little about his policies, how much different he is from McCain and they really don’t have a clue about what McCain is proposing and how negatively it affects them. All they know is that they really, really aren’t sure they can vote “for the black guy”.
It sickens me to say that, but it is just the truth.
As I’ve said, the “nasty treatment” of Sarah Palin is justification for absolution for the sin of not voting for the black guy.
She’s nothing more than the smokescreen millions of people need to feel better about themselves for being racist idiots.
In otherwords, America likes to do things in the smallest increments possible. Instead of a candidate for 50% of people (Hillary) the Dems chose one for (20%). Seeing this the repugs went for a female VP, which potentially makes 50% happy in the same way, but actual cedes only the small potential of actually empowering her at all.
Lots of chips flying but no wood getting cut on the ladies behalf. The American electorate (NOT just white men) will look at that and in large portion say, “Perfect! I don’t have to give women OR blacks any real power, but I can still feel like I am part of something truly great!”
Go Giants!