Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage

[Joanne98]

By FRANK RICH
SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.

Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.

The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.

As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)

Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07rich.html?ex=1378440000&en=20cbb79ef0bedc51&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg

[Loge23]

1. Is the writing on the wall?

Both Frank Rich and Dowd in today's NYT alluded to the strong possibility of a Dem loss in November - Dowd essentially expects it.
I have personally heard two separate extremely ugly racial slurs about Barack from business acquaintances (not friends) in the last week.
Last night, in sympathetic territory, the dinner conversation included the likelihood of the hoods coming out in the voting booth.
We may survive four more long years of the reich, but the country cannot. The Supreme Court will be set for decades in the next four years effectively completing the coup. Warfare, with Palin & McCain presenting a more formidable war machine than even Bush & Cheney, will be rampant. Relationships with Russia and/or China will be tested.
Unfortunately, the tremendous sense of hope fueled by the spectacular failures of the last eight years is rapidly giving way to the harsh reality of our nation's true colors.
If this country will not vote for Barack ultimately on the basis of his race then the dye is cast for the future.
I have read many posts on how this is not an election based on race. In terms of the real issues, this is completely true. BUt in terms of who we really are as a nation, it is an ideal.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. If you live where your icon implies

Then rest assured the rest of the nation is NOT Florida. No offense but Florida is not representative of my State, or of many others.

[Loge23]

3. Let's hope so (eom)

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Cain and Unable