For his speech last night, John McCain had a walkway built into the floor – perhaps to remind him of the town hall settings he’s most comfortable with. He’s not a great platform speaker, and proved this yet again yesterday. He did not eclipse Palin. But the text was interesting, and here’s my take on some of it.
“I don’t work for a party, I don’t work for a special interest, I work for you”. After accepting his party’s nomination McCain says he won’t work for them – and that’s the crux of his campaign. Not a third term, he says, but a fresh break. Reform is McCain’s theme and as James said earlier he’d won so much kudos with the Palin pick that he could afford to wag his finger at his party and tell them what power-hungry, sex-mad little spendthrifts they’d been on the Hill.
Sarah Palin “has worked with her hands and nose…” For a millisecond I thought this another obscure Alaskan pastime we didn’t know about. But I missheard. He said she’s “worked with hands and knows what it’s like to worry about mortgage payments and health care and the cost of gasoline and groceries.” Cue shot of St Sarah, her hair back in the librarian’s bun. Whether she wears it up or down is becoming a point of American national debate – one up on Obama.
“My friends… ignore the ground noise and the static” Some protester shouted “Vote Barack Obama” then bolted. The crowd responded by ignoring McCain and shouting USA! USA! until the police nabbed her. Infiltration isn’t as hard as you’d expect – anyone can get in to these conventions as passes are transferrable. McCain had tried to calm them “please.. please.. please” and could have become a dangerously failed experiment in crowd control. But his “ground noise” quip went well. He’d have been better, in my view, to do a Blair about how she couldnt have pulled a stunt like that in Saddam’s Iraq.
“I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them.“ I went to see the exiled Democrat Joe Lieberman at a fringe meeting yesterday, and he said this is one of the main reasons he’s backing McCain. That Bill Clinton was for free trade, but Obama is against it. Against the Korean free trade proposal, which Lieberman said he was particularly appalled by, and has even questioned Nafta. The candidates are polar opposites in the approach to globalisation – Obama favours a Franco-German protectionist approach nurturing favoured industries. A recipe for unemployment, of course. So McCain is fighting back. This is a wedge issue for those who care enough about it.
“My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases will eliminate them.” Yes, high taxes kill jobs – I’d love for the Tories to make this basic point more often.
That he went to Vietnam “for my own pleasure, my own pride. I didn’t think there was a cause more important than me” Huh? I was surprised at this idea of him as a born-again patriot. It’s strange to suggest he enlisted out of a sense of adventurism, not patriotism. Yet he told his familiar POW story powerfully, there were literally tears in the audience’s eyes.
“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s.” So he didn’t love his country when he put on its uniform? Not very credible, given his family’s military background. This “was blind but now I see” narrative could have been dropped completely.
“What is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice.” Amen, lets here Cameron do a riff on the same theme. McCain had plenty more. “Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucrats.” So does Gordon Brown, and Cameron should nail him for it.
“Let’s help… bad teachers find another line of work”. Nice soundbite, but the wrong sentiment. His aim should be to liberalise schools so headmasters sack poor staff like every other employer.
“I hate war, it’s terrible beyond imagination”. He could have copied Eisenhower and elaborated a little here on this theme – his CV entitles him to.
“My country saved me and I will fight for her so long as I draw breath so help me God… Fight with me. Fight with me” – reminiscent of Cameron’s “I want you to come with me” in his Blackpool 05 speech. This set off the crowd, who roared and McCain gave up waiting for them to subdue. He launched into his peroration without them shutting up, so I didn’t catch the rest of it. It all ended with that dismal “Raising McCain” song. All those balloons they’ve had in nets all week were finally released. Some were humongous, which the audiences batted around like beach balls. The song was Barracuda by Heart – another salute to Sarah, her nickname when she was playing basketball rather too competitively. Then, as if not to be outdone by Obama, picture of fireworks in the screen beside him.
In my view, they were the only fireworks in the room tonight. McCain doesn’t speak well, and he spoke for too long. It wasn’t as good as Palin’s speech, and for the first time the vice president overshadowed the nominee. The Neilsen ratings out today showed that 19m women watched her speech, 5m more than Obama. She has halved the so-called “enthusiasm gap” motivating Democrats and Republicans to 20 points. And that – not McCain’s speech – was the achievement of this week.
P.S. I found out why Palin was struggling with the teleprompter last night, and why it looked bad for those like me who thought she was fluffing lines. The old teleprompter broke, a new one had been put in a few hours before and it was moving too fast for her – failing to stop for applause. So she had to ad lib chunks of it, and looking down at a written version of her speech, which she’d taken crumpled up from the pocket of an aide because her original had too many scribbles on it. So her pitbull/lipstick gag last night was improvised. As a former newscaster, it won’t have been her first autocue malfunction. But the way that no one watching on television noticed was class. All hail.
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