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Thursday, September 4, 2008
McCain’s big night
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He is the stern and compassionate grandfather, the reliable voice of experience who behaves and acts according to a code of personal conduct borne of hardship and testing.
John McCain’s acceptance speech was upbeat and positive, optimistic and spirited. He made a strong saales pitch to those who are looking to get comfortable with a leader who represents “change,” the kind of change that’s not risky or flighty, but different. He spelled out in enough detail to draw real distinctions between himself and Barack Obama and promised that he and Gov. Sarah Palin would be the reformers who shake up the Washington establishment. The crowd loved it.
Demonstrators sought to disrupt John McCain’s big night, drawing the camera’s eye and delegates’ attention. McCain was cool. “Please don’t be diverted by the ground noise and the static,” he told them. “Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.”
It was not a spectacular speech until the end, but it was one that will raise the comfort level of most Americans with him. That’s all he really needed to do.
The most beautiful part of the speech was the finish and his discussion of the POW ordeal. It does not get any better. Said McCain:
“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.”
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Waiting for John
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A dozen years ago, John McCain delivered what may go down as his best convention speech — that in support of U.S. Sen. Bob Dole. It was a speech where he expressed the Vietnam veteran’s appreciation to a those who had fought in World War II, the generation that saved the free world.
What to expect tonight? No repeat of last night is required. The country knows John McCain. Some Republicans love him; some are lukewarm. He is a maverick. But whatever your thoughts and feelings, he’s known. No mysteries of his life are out there to be explored.
We’re not being introduced to John McCain. We’re having a conversation with a man we know. The platform and the convention hall is being changed to reflect that. It’ll be a town hall.
If his speech hits a homer, fine. If not, no problem. We know John McCain.
His views and those of Barack Obama are radically different. You either prefer one or the other.
The race, really, is a referendum on whether Barack Obama is ready to lead this country in a world where bad guys want to kill us because of who we are and what we believe and represent to the world. It’s a referendum on whether we want the size and reach of government Obama and Biden represents
McCain should be upbeat and positive about the future. He’s likely not to get the audience Gov. Sarah Palin got Wednesday, but that’s no big deal. We know him — and we know how he will act in times of crisis and stress.
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Southern women (and men) know Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Southern women — and the men who love them — will identify instantly with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Her speech last night was brutally effective. Democrats do not know how to react today. They’re stumbling all over the place trying to construct an appropriate response, but they’re always a phrase or a Joe Biden smirk away from overplaying it. They can’t ignore her, but they can’t trash-talk her either.
In a soft, inquiring-minds-want-to-know fashion, she delivered devastating lines.
On Barack Obama: “This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word ‘victory’ except when talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to the studio lot, what exactly is our opponent’s plan?”
This is a woman who speaks as “the mother of one of those troops” determined to bring victory to Iraq. One week from today son, Track, will “deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.”
As she points out, she’s not some Washington insider. She’s the mother of a serviceman sitting across the aisle at the country church in small-town America who’s exasperated with the way things are getting done — or, more precisely, not — in Washington, a good, Southern country woman who temporarily hands over the newborn to her husband or daughter, saying “Hold this baby while I go to Washington and whup some butt.”
We all have seen her, if not the whupping kind, certainly the fed-up kind, or the take-charge kind who’s convinced that everything’s falling apart and 100 people expecting to be fed are due within the hour.
They’re polite and well-mannered. But in this state of mind, they’re not to be messed with.
This woman just closed off Barack Obama’s openings in the South — and throughout small-town America.
She looks sweetly into the gaggle of guests and muses aloud: “The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery; this world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn’t just need an organizer.”
Ouch. Barack Obama’s just been whupped.
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