Just finished watching Governor Sarah Palin's speech in Dayton, OH. Hmm. Take a gander:
Seriously, she looks and sounds like a soccer mom giving a campaign speech! We are really supposed to buy into the idea that she can step into the presidency at a moments notice?
David Schraub's post at The Moderate Voice while watching:
So far, this is not going well. She looks star-struck up there. My girlfriend says she’s rambling. I think she sounds hokey (sometimes that’s a good thing, but I don’t think here). Her diction is not strong — she sounds halting to me. And it’s thematically disjointed.
The part about mentioning Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton was a forced nod. The fact that she had the gall to bring up Hillary's 18 million cracks! OMG! If Hillary wasn't invested in Obama before, she sure as hell will be now! Hillary will work overtime to make sure that ceiling holds for at least four more years.
I think that the 18 million cracks reference was a serious tatical mistake by the McCain campaign. Did they vet the speech? Did they think Hillary would take that sitting down?
I think Hillary will volunteer herself for attacking this one personally now. She may not have been a willing attack dog before but look out now. No half term governor, former mayor of a city of less than 9,000 people is going to hijack what she started, after all the time and effort she put into this, especially if she will not benefit from it.
Does the McCain campaign seriously want Hillary to be Obama's active attack dog along with Biden?
Speaking of Biden. What is McCain going to do about the debate. Can you imagine the woman at that podium in a debate with Joe Biden? Are they going to lock Sarah Palin in an intensive debate immersion room for the next few weeks?
I assume the woman is intelligent. Even with that assumption, what is the strategy? That she will appear so overmatched against Biden that people will equate Biden with the hunter that killed Bambi's mom? Why would you try that strategy?
They've got an incredible amount of work to do in the next several weeks. They get a pass for the convention, maybe, but then all bets are off.
I think that either:
- John McCain had a defining lapse in judgement that even exceeds the lapses in judgement that Ronald Reagan, and, later, Ronald Reagan's lapse in judgement, George H. W. Bush came to regret. Or....
- John McCain is about to learn, quite painfully, that your advisors can be complete idiots even when they are getting paid obscene amounts of money.
Which it is depends entirely on who made the call here. Either way, I am not seeing this ending well.
I said it earlier, and I still believe, John McCain had few, if any, good choices. I didn't envy him his decision. I still don't.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern Sphere: Related Content
