McCain at the Convention
Posted on September 5, 2008
The best part of McCain’s speech last night was the end.
He finally got the crowd revved up, and his call for change, with the cheering in the background, will make a nice campaign commercial.
The rest of it was only so-so. He seemed distracted by the protesters (can you imagine the media response if somebody did that to Obama?) and he was not on his game.
But the speech did serve two purposes.
First, it highlighted how magnificent Sarah Palin’s speech really was. If everybody can hit the back flip on the balance beam perfectly, then it really doesn’t seem like a big deal. But if only one person can do it, then it seems like a much bigger deal.
Palin was the only one to hit the back flip on the balance beam perfectly out of any of the convention speeches, including Biden and Obama.
She stuck her landing, and her achievement seems all the greater because nobody else could.
Palin went from a novelty to the next generation of Republican leadership in the space of two days. Is this a great country or what?
McCain also finally got onto the right message.
This campaign isn’t about experience and it isn’t about military service.
It is about changing Washington and making the government work better for the people.
Only McCain and Palin have real-world experience in bringing real change to Washington.
Biden has always been a political insider, and Obama is a typical Chicago-machine politician.
Obama talks a good game about being a reformer, but he is a product of Chicago politics, not a reformer of it.
That Washington is unpopular with the American people is without a doubt.
The American people are tired of bridges to nowhere, they are tired of billions of waste on dubious programs, they are tired of an unresponsive and incompetent federal bureaucracy. And they don’t want their taxes raised to pay for more of the same.
Obama promises to tax the rich to give more money and government to the poor. Robbing the rich to give to the poor sounds great when you are Robin Hood. But it is a dangerous public policy when you rob the rich to give to the government bureaucracy.
Class warfare sounds seductive, but it is not good politics either. The American people want to be rich. They don’t spend their time hating them.
But that is the basic philosophy of the Obama and his Democratic allies.
McCain’s speech wasn’t great, but he had a good convention nonetheless. His running mate is a star and his fall message is a winner. What’s not to like?