A month ago I was comparing John McCain to a sack of wet oats…unfavorably. There was no spirit to his presentation, no presidential charisma, just a tired looking Old White Guy stalking the speaker’s platform while Barack Obama bestrode the world like a rock-star colossus.
McCain’s lack of vim was contagious. The conservative base of the party was going to hold their proverbial noses and vote for the ticket, but they sure weren’t going to get very enthused about it either. Some simply shrugged and said, “I’m gonna sit this one out.”
Then McCain performed his first authentic political miracle. Somewhere deep inside the former Skyraider pilot, the quintessential Navy jet jockey decided he had had enough.
Advised by his campaign manager Rick Davis, McCain’s television messages against Obama took on a satirical edge, tying the Illinois democrat to the triviality of the celebrity culture, and mocking the stage-managed pomp of some of his appearances –like the speech at Berlin’s Victory monument. McCain jumped all over Obama when he suggested that keeping your tires inflated properly could be just as effective as drilling for new oil. Thousands of “Obama pressure gages” were distributed –to the fury of the Democratic candidate—and the daily polls showed the gap between the two men narrowing as the Democratic convention neared.
The DNC turned out to be a pretty good show, with Obama emerging from a Greek temple on the last night to give the best speech of his life before 80,000 adoring fans. It was the talk of the political world…for twelve whole hours.
Then John McCain pulled off his second and most brilliant --and luckiest—political miracle of the year by announcing he had selected as his running-mate Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin, 44, an attractive brunette who also happens to be as tough as railroad spikes, an accomplished reformer, a gifted speaker, an authentic values conservative and the most popular governor in the United States.
The public got one look at her Friday in Ohio and went bananas. Suddenly the electricity and excitement that Obama’s appearances generated became a part of the McCain Straight Talk Express. Wherever he and Palin went, they were mobbed by excited, adoring masses who wanted a better look and to connect with them. Obama and his speech disappeared from the national conversation.
As everyone who reads this blog or who has opened a web page or read a newspaper in the past week knows, Sarah Palin found herself on the receiving end of the biggest effusion of bile ever spewed at one person by the liberal press and the left blogosphere.
They accused Sarah Palin of every kind of moral, political and motherly failing they could think of. They questioned the parentage of her Down’s syndrome child and then used him to question whether she could be a good mother if elected. They uttered half-truths and rumors that no one bothered to check out. For a solid (and sordid) week new gallons of mud were flung at the candidate almost every hour in the hopes that something would stick.
Last night, with the mainstream media ginning up rumors that McCain would have to dump her, Palin walked out onto the stage of the Republican convention, poised, attractive, recognizably and typically American and looking every inch like a happy warrior. For some forty minutes, demonstrating incredible skill and poise as a speaker, she demolished the Obama-Biden ticket without once mentioning them by name. With devastating wit and impeccable timing, she skewered the Democrats while simultaneously showing herself to be supremely likeable and competent. It was the best political speech by an American woman…at least in its delivery…ever, and one of the very best by anyone in the past ten years.
This latter-day pioneer woman of grit, wisdom and good cheer appeared unbroken and unbowed by the oceans of spew that had been dumped on her. Instead she was fighting back like an angry polar bear –forget the pit bull metaphor—and showing veteran politicians how to fight back against slander.
How the convention loved it! There had not been such rapture at a GOP gathering since the active career of Ronald Reagan. Some people were strongly reminded of the Gipper and of Margaret Thatcher. Cross a Great Communicator with an Iron Lady and Sarah Palin is what you get.
The next day even Palin’s critics were grudgingly admitting she had done a good job speaking. Her friends, I assure you, were over the moon. Rush Limbaugh, never a big McCain supporter, was calling him “McBrilliant.” The ever-lovin’ base was awake, on the phones and digging up cash for the campaign. People who were sitting out the election were chomping at the bit to vote for McCain-Palin.
As the left continued to pile on the slime she only became more and more of a sympathetic figure to the American public –which for some reason never seems to side with the bullies. Was this planned or just the kind of good luck granted to great commanders like McCain, who are willing to take a bold risk?
Thursday afternoon, a former sack of wet oats swung onto the podium for a walkthrough of his acceptance speech. He walked with the gingerly tread of a hotshot Navy jet pilot, and grinned like the happy warrior he is –a man whose bones might break but never, never, never his spirit. The game was on!
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