Conventions summary

I’d summarize the acceptance speeches at the recent conventions as:

Obama: McCain is Bush. We are the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy.
McCain: We are the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, & Reagan. I am John McCain.

(Did you notice the backdrop when Palin was speaking: Mt Rushmore with its Republican heroes: Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt).

Related to that, Michael Barone writes about The Battle of the Party Themes:

The national conventions are political shows staged to influence voters.

Soon, we can measure the bounce that the two tickets have received from their gatherings. But the more important question is whether the conventions establish arguments that are sustainable — over the course of the campaign and, for the winning ticket, over four years of governance. Four years ago, John Kerry’s convention produced a narrative that proved unsustainable.

George W. Bush’s convention produced one that was sustainable until Katrina and the 2005-06 meltdown in Iraq — yet that may be redeemed in history by the success of the surge and the rapid response to Gustav.

One of the themes hammered home at Barack Obama’s convention was McCain equals Bush. That never struck me as sustainable and was pretty well demolished on the first full day of McCain’s convention. Neither Obama nor McCain is a generic candidate — they are distinctive individuals, to whose specific characteristics voters respond, positively or negatively.

The Republican convention’s premise is that McCain is the maverick reformer — an American version of Nicolas Sarkozy, who replaced an unpopular president of his own party. There is plenty in McCain’s record to back that up. Not least is his selection of Sarah Palin for vice president. Palin’s record of successfully battling establishment Republicans and oil companies in Alaska clearly appealed to McCain.

And that was amplified by the mainstream media attacks on her. Now the media, which were not alarmed by Obama’s thin record, is worried about Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency. Other women who were stay-at-home moms for years and then emerged into public life have outperformed their resumes — namely, Katharine Graham, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Nancy Pelosi and Geraldine Ferraro. Palin, who has negotiated a natural gas pipeline with the oil companies and Canadian federal, provincial and Inuit authorities, may do so, too. We’ll see if that argument is sustainable….

This entry was posted in Currents, Politics, Roosevelt, Sarah Palin. Bookmark the permalink.

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