Palin Tonight (revisited)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(See my pre-speech post here.)

Seriously, this is a joke, right? That's pretty much what I was asking myself and anyone who would listen during pretty much the entirety of Palin's speech.

What a joke.

But, let's give credit where credit is due, Libby nailed it: "Sarah Palin will give a great speech. She will lie her face off." Check and check. Though the "greatness" of the speech needs to be considered relative to the expectations, which were disturbingly low. She gave a great speech from the perspective of the base, the party faithful at whom it was directed, as well as of the theocratic ideologues behind her candidacy.

And she gave a great speech according to the media, or at least according to the anchors and analysts who make up the celebrity TV commentariat. "A star is born," gushed Wolf Blitzer -- and similar sentiments were offered up by the likes of Chris Matthews, David Gregory, and David Gergen, and pretty much everyone else, so swept up were they in the moment, so taken with Palin, so eager to praise her "authenticity," one of the words of the night. Someone else -- it might also have been Blitzer -- concluded that she's hit a home run. Presumably the wind was blowing out, the fences had been moved in, and Palin was hitting off a tee with an aluminum bat.

Seriously, this person -- I'd say "woman," but the Republicans are so quick to throw around the sexism charge -- is on a national ticket and could be the next vice president? Are you kidding me?

I don't care about her "authenticity". What does that even mean? That she's "real"? But shouldn't we expect more of our democratic leaders? Was George Washington a great president because he was "authentic"? It may be the bias of advanced democracies that we expect our leaders to be just like us, but, again, what does that mean? All I saw tonight was a woman who is clearly not prepared for the national and world stage. She and her surrogates, like Giuliani, whose speech just before hers was appallingly awful, are talking up her executive experience, which already separates her from the rest of us, but she came across not as a leader but as the "hockey mom" she wants us to believe she still is. But, seriously, do Americans want a "hockey mom" anywhere near the Oval Office?

And, yes, she lied, and lied, and lied. About herself, about McCain, about Obama. For example, she claimed she was against the "bridge to nowhere" even though she was for it until public opinion turned against it. And, yes, she attacked Obama, digging and digging, making light of his experiences and accomplishments, and it was disgusting. Who is she to attack Obama and Biden? She is a pathetic little tool next to either one of them.

And yet, as expected, the media loved it, and wanted to make sure we knew they loved it. Maybe because they themselves wanted to seem more "authentic," more in touch with "real" Americans. Maybe because she criticized them and they wanted to make amends. Maybe because of those low expectations. Maybe because they wanted to seem "fair" and "balanced." Maybe because many of them are gullible fools. "The war has started," according to Andrea Mitchell, or something like that, yet more idiocy from the fawning media establishment.

What a joke.

I admit, it was not an awful speech, and Palin did not give an awful performance, but neither the speech nor the performance were anywhere near what the media is claiming they were. All she did was deliver without serious blunders a carefully crafted address to over-enthusiastic party loyalists pre-programmed to leap up and applaud, an address that combined her hokey personal story with lies, smears, and McCain worship.

And it was a speech largely without substance. What did she utter in terms of the issues, and in terms of policy, other than shallow regurgitations of Republican talking points? Her main policy focus was on energy, but, even there, all she said was that drilling for more domestic oil is the way to go. She alleged that Obama is against any such drilling, accusing him therefore of being against ending America's dependence on foreign oil, but she made no mention of alternative energy, nor of Obama's substantive energy plan. And what of national security. All we got was the standard lines about 9/11 and al Qaeda, along with the dubious claim that the Iraq War is about to be won. And there was almost nothing on domestic policy -- where she is, if anything, an extremist.

Sure, she reached out to "real" Americans, but she did so not with substantive policy proposals but with her own personal story, a story that, of course, has been thoroughly cleaned up for public consumption.

What a joke.

**********

Her speech is getting a warm reception over at TNR, but I think Stump contributor Eve Fairbanks has the best assessment there:

-- "People have questioned her experience and her background; nobody really questioned whether she could give a good speech, especially after her successful rollout address last Friday. Tonight, diminished expectations combined with Palin's known-to-be-remarkable charisma made for the speech-making equivalent of putting a champ bowler two feet in front of a set of plastic duckpins."

-- "That's the problem with the positive case Palin made for herself, with its emphasis on all that small-town stuff: It convinced me that she makes a good PTA mom, that she may make a fine mayor, that she hasn't totally bombed as the essentially brand-new governor of the third-least-populous state in the Union, even that I might like to have a beer with her, or a glass of fermented whale milk or whatever one drinks with mooseburgers. But just because we're a nation of a hundred thousand Wasillas doesn't mean all those hundred thousand mayors ought to be in the White House. Tonight, she sounded for all the world like an unusually sharp version of those 'regular people' they drag onstage at conventions to tell their stories in the off-primetime hours."

-- "She was likeable enough, to borrow a line of Obama's. Maybe even lovable. But I don't think she neutered the argument that she's not ready, that her reformist record isn't what she claims it is, that she was a cynical pick, or that she -- as a poll released today found that a big majority of likely women voters believe -- undermines McCain's claim to 'experience.' I don’t think she did much more than anybody thought she would do."

(Noam Scheiber's assessment is pretty good, too: "[S]he came off as sort of perky, which is refreshing on some level, but not necessarily vice-presidential. And maybe you don't want to be so lacerating your first time out. Still, she far exceeded expectations, at least if by expectations you mean the cartoonish image conservatives accused the media of creating.")

I didn't find her either likeable or lovable. Instead, I found her clueless yet presumptuous.

And, if you haven't figured it out by now, I think she's a complete and utter joke.