Thursday, September 4, 2008

Excuse me, but...

...who's running for president? Why was Lindsey Graham's speech rewritten to be an introduction to a Sarah Palin video? Graham genuinely likes McCain, but they made him switch his speech in midstream and talk about Palin. Even Tom Ridge was obliged to make obeisance to the bespectacled beauty queen, not that he was capable of doing much more.

Cindy McCain's delivery was so bad, one suspects it was scheduled before her husband's to make him seem articulate by comparison. Then there was the "Meet John McCain" video, replete with monochrome scenes from the 60s reminding us just how old the guy is -- and who was it who thought Mama McCain referring to her Johnny as a "mama's boy" was somehow endearing?

McCain had his usual problems reading the teleprompter, and his speech was nothing but the usual Republican boilerplate. Not only were there no specifics, there was nothing even resembling a plan -- save for a suggestion that it might be time for a surrogate war with Russia as well as continued war in the Middle East.

Big applause line: "I have that record, and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not." Yes, John, you were a hero -- in yet another war we never should have fought -- assuming we are willing to accept the idea that being a hapless victim is the same as being a hero.

You say that after that, "I never was my own man anymore: I was my country's."

Well, you were enough of your own man to leave your crippled wife and marry rich. You let your new wife's rich father put you into politics. Yes, you were a maverick -- "a calf who becomes the property of the first person who brands it."

Prepare to see and hear a lot more of Sarah Palin, America. She's the main hope of the Republican Party.

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