As If Loyalty Was Black and White
How was your "convention" experience?
For me, the whole convention concept has tended to be a non-starter - I am in great admiration of those who make the effort to participate, but tend towards major skepticism. Frankly, I have rarely been able to even watch this schlock-on-the-box. But the importance this time overruled my hurl-impulse. Only to leave me repeatedly embracing the porcelain throne!
And what about this Minnesota Gestapo? The Constitution-violating thugs who have absolutely trashed our country and the principles upon which our Nation was founded, not to mention despoiling our former seeming status as lead human-rights arbiter on the planet (we'll leave the destruction of our economy for another time), truly deserved flamboyant demonstrations, and I commend everyone who stood up and acted as a witness to the absolute criminality of the republican party. How did it come to be that Big Brother concluded that there was a free speech-exclusion zone throughout the city? And when did pre-emptive suppression of free speech become an American Value?
Jackson Browne, recently ripped off by the McBush campaign, is damn prescient here (next track on Lives in the Balance is also ever-so-cogent: "this world is long on hunger, this world is short on joy, this world is not your toy):
As if I really didn't understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you
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And so this Minnesota convention was even more interesting than the last. With caveat that Obama's speech, of the top four, was far and away the most inspiring, in line with the goals of our founders as expressed in our vital documents such as the Constitution, not to mention on-topic.
I have a pot-pourri of posts to share here, in the interest of continuing consideration of the critical issues that I think are at the heart of this election. I'm passing on extracts, at times painfully shortened (a dutiful patriot would follow the links!). I can't think of a better way to start than Mr. Keillor, who titles his insightful on-site article "Who wants to see Sarah Palin as the next president":
The Republicans are meeting down the hill from my house, helicopters are pounding the air, and there are more suits on the streets and big black SUVs and a brownish cloud venting from the hockey arena where the convention is assembled. A large moment for little old St. Paul, which is more accustomed to visitations by conventions of morticians and foundation garment salesmen and the Sons of the Desert, and so we are thrilled. It makes no difference that the city is Democratic. What matters is that, for a few days, TV will show a few pictures of the big bend in the Mississippi, the limestone bluffs, the capitol and cathedral, and a tree-shaded avenue or two, and some of the world will know that we exist.
Too bad that the Current Occupant and Mr. Cheney canceled their St. Paul appearances so they could focus on hurricane-threatened New Orleans and lend their expertise to rescue operations. As it turned out, they weren't needed, which has been generally true for a long time. Their reporting for duty now only served to remind everyone of what happened three years ago. And Mr. McCain, as of this writing, seemed torn between coming to St. Paul to address the convention and comforting hurricane victims in Mississippi, if any could be found.
Meanwhile, he posed a stark question for voters to ponder: How much would you like to see Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, as the next president of the United States? And what does the question say about Mr. McCain's love of the country that she might suddenly need to lead? No need to discuss these things at length, really. The gentleman played his card, a two of hearts. Make of it what you will.
The challenge for Republicans is how to change the subject from the dismal story of Republican triumph the past eight years and get voters to focus on, say, the old man's war record or Mrs. Palin's perkiness or the oddity of the skinny guy's last name. If they can succeed there, they can win this thing.
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That seems to me frighteningly close to right. McSame/Bush/Shame promised one hell of a lot, but it was all in total contradiction to more or less everything he has recently done and professed. He apparently has not even come around to identifying anything in the way of even vague schemes by which he might pretend to be different from the Sluggos and Stooges who have with his full support taken civilization back several centuries. Never mind anything specific in the way of actual actions or programs to implement even one of the goals he mentioned. It would be complete foolishness to simply invest trust in a politician who is so totally shallow. It's hard to resist the impression that he's lying to us (and ever-so-cocky he will get away with it). It's all platitudes, interestingly in most cases regarding issues his party and votes have raped and pillaged us over for the last eight years. We know where he has been, namely a pretend-maverick with no actual follow-through twin for Bush.
I believe John Seery just about has it pegged, namely Palin as the epitomy of Ugly Americanism (she does indeed seem to more or less define UA, for anyone who has any concern at all about how we are perceived beyond our own myopic small-minded boundaries):
I know, I know: Sarah Palin is receiving rosy plaudits for her speech last night. She is being heralded as the savior of the GOP, someone with enough moxie to sustain the party's unholy alliance between the oil plutocrats and the oily preachocrats.
Many pundits in reviewing her polished performance claim to see an unflappable and gung-ho winner on stage. My honest-to-goodness visceral reaction was quite otherwise. What I saw on that stage was the personification of small-minded smugness, an utter lack of humility, a kind of self-righteous entitlement based on little more than puffed-up narrowness. She struck me not as plucky but, rather, as stunningly immodest--to the point of arrogance. Some people are arrogant and maybe deserve to be. They know it, and flaunt it, while everyone else thinks they are jerks. But there's another kind of arrogance, perhaps harder to spot at first, an arrogance that apparently doesn't even recognize itself as such, a sanctified, self-satisfied presumptuousness that flows from sheer naïveté about oneself and the world and manifests itself in giddy ambition.
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But there's no denying that the D-for-dumb party continues to try to shoot foot if only they remembered where said foot was. Inept is their game. Barack, this is where you as organizer are supposed to come in! Dan Conley here:
For all the loose talk about sexism this week, the single most sexist act of this past bizarre week in American political life is the Democratic Party's non-response to Sarah Palin. Trying not to be "harsh" or "turn off female voters", they've decided to give her a pass and leave everything to the media.
The media, being the beaten down dogs that they are, immediately dropped their fully credible and necessary "who is she?" narrative the minute Palin stopped reading the teleprompter and didn't run crying from the podium. Oh my God, she's a politician and can read a speech! How wrong we've been.
Of course she can read an effective speech. To think otherwise was naive and sexist. But again, I can't blame the media for switching off their Palin narrative at the drop of a snide slam, it's not their job to bring the GOP Vice Presidential nominee down to size. It's the Democrats' job and they are failing miserably.
You don't have to attack the Palin experience or her family to make a strong case against her. This is a former mayor who tried to get a librarian fired because she wouldn't ban books. This lends credibility to the claim that she abused her power as Governor to get her brother-in-law fired and when the Public Safety Commissioner wouldn't obliged, she fired him.
She's taken no stands on any foreign policy issue -- other than to call the Iraq War "God's work." And on most domestic issues, she's stayed under the radar. Democrats should be out there every day demanding that McCain remove the tape from her mouth and put her on Meet the Press. Of course now that the press has been forced to carry all the water, the campaign has a credible reason why she'll choose to stay away and will instead deliver last night's speech hundreds more times over the next 60 days.
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Indeed! Conceding SP any cloak of sanctity from questioning is absolutely foolish and unpatriotic. This is a person who might actually have world-governing power invested in her some day (if inanity, superficiality, and a general sense of entitlement are now mainstream "values," oh preserve us!). Get her preacher and husband out here and give them the regular treatment. There is absolutely no excuse for her and the republican party to claim she is beyond the scathing and possibly-insulting and intrusive investigation to which the Obamas (not to mention Clintons and Edwards) have been routinely subjected. And get on with that troopergate cooperation, you who are so self-proclaimed to be high-minded!
Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, notes some very illustrative but disturbing parallels (much more of interest at link):
Enormously gratifying to see how many bloggers have found my book NIXONLAND illuminating of Sara Palin's speech last night, and of the Republicans' convention narrative generally. It really is textbook: Rudy Giuliani braying how Sara doesn't wear a mink coat, she wears a respectable Republican cloth parka; Sara herself, with a genial fury that frankly recalled for me Ronald Reagan at his most effective, pulling out all the stops for the pity-party strategy I describe in the book thusly:
[ed: howzabout more on distaff McBush convention wardrobe, with rumored value in the hundreds of thousands]
I watched the speech couch-bound and spellbound, at the home of a tall and taciturn prominent St. Paul radio personality, his gracious wife, and a staffer from a liberal magazine. I found that watching the speech with fellow liberals turned out to be more useful to me than watching it in the hall, for reasons I hope to explain later. I scribbled the most salient lines madly in my Moleskin. Forthwith, an annotation:
And so, in the the lingering afterglow of a staggeringly intense standing ovation, the keynote is struck: the media hates John McCain. That is because the media hates victory. The media, by association, also hates you. John McCain will protect you from them.
(A visual note: Liberty Bell projected in the background, then the Washington Monument.)
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Getting back to McBush/Same. Tristero, posting at Hullabaloo, does yeo-work in demonstrating just what a fearful sort McSame/Bush is. It's incontrovertible:
St. John McCain is always eager to remind us of prehistoric times, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and he actually demonstrated real courage, But he doesn't want to talk about today. And that's for good reason.
Today, John McCain is afraid of his own shadow. McCain is so afraid, there is hardly anything he cares to do or talk about except the past:
McCain's afraid to be seen on the same stage as George W. Bush.
McCain's afraid to discuss his secret (translated: non-existent) plans to get bin Laden.
McCain's afraid to discuss the vetting of his vice-presidential candidate.
McCain's afraid to have his vice-presidential candidate talk to the press; she's been shipped back to Alaska. [UPDATE]
McCain's afraid to discuss his reckless support of Bush/Iraq, which dates to Sept 12, 2001.
McCain's afraid to discuss plans to withdraw from Iraq in our lifetimes.
McCain's afraid to discuss a serious energy policy.
McCain's afraid to discuss a workable tax plan.
McCain's so afraid of hard work, he admits he's never learned even the basics of economics.
McCain's so afraid of his party they dictated to him he couldn't run with the candidate he wanted.
McCains's afraid to discuss even the vaguest details of his plans for this country because he hasn't any.
McCain's even afraid to discuss why he refuses to support scholarships for vets.
And McCain's so afraid of change he hasn't learned to use a computer and can't even log on to his own website.
But oh! How eager McCain is to talk about the past! Those glorious days when he actually had a spine. McCain revels in those days and well he should. It makes us forget how much of a compromised, philandering, conformist he's been ever since. A man so spineless, he voted with George W. Bush, by his own admission, 90% of the time.
The John McCain of 2008 is a doddering, fearful, ignorant goat. And he's been one for a very, very loooooooooooooooooong time.
That's far more polite than I could have been. McBush has become truly evil, and that needs to be said loud and clear. Whether it is his desperate grasping for power, incipient dementia, or something even more demonical, this is not something we can afford to have pretending to direct our country.
Even Bob Herbert, muted as he can be through the sorry corporate NY Times filter has this:
If there was one pre-eminent characteristic of the Republican convention this week, it was the quality of deception. Words completely lost their meaning. Reality was turned upside down.
From the faux populist gibberish mouthed by speaker after speaker, you would never have known that the Republicans have been in power over the past several years and used that titanic power to lead the country to its present sorry state.
In his acceptance speech on Thursday night, Senator John McCain did his best Sam Cooke imitation ("A Change is Gonna Come") and vowed to put the country "back on the road to prosperity and peace."
Mr. McCain spoke at the end of a day in which stock market indexes plunged. The next morning the Labor Department gave us the grim news that another 84,000 jobs had been lost in August, and that the official unemployment rate had climbed to 6.1 percent - the highest in five years.
If there were any good ideas at this convention of mostly rich and mostly right-wing delegates about how to haul the country out of this mess that the G.O.P. has gotten it into, they were kept well hidden. Perhaps they were tucked away behind the more prominently displayed creationism and "just-say-no to global warming" documents.
It stretches the mind almost to the breaking point to think of John McCain as an agent of substantive change. He once believed that Phil Gramm was the most qualified person in the United States to be president. And he now believes that Sarah Palin is the most qualified to be vice president.
That is not the fault of Mr. Gramm or Ms. Palin. But it sure tells us a lot about the judgment of John McCain.
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For me, the whole convention concept has tended to be a non-starter - I am in great admiration of those who make the effort to participate, but tend towards major skepticism. Frankly, I have rarely been able to even watch this schlock-on-the-box. But the importance this time overruled my hurl-impulse. Only to leave me repeatedly embracing the porcelain throne!
And what about this Minnesota Gestapo? The Constitution-violating thugs who have absolutely trashed our country and the principles upon which our Nation was founded, not to mention despoiling our former seeming status as lead human-rights arbiter on the planet (we'll leave the destruction of our economy for another time), truly deserved flamboyant demonstrations, and I commend everyone who stood up and acted as a witness to the absolute criminality of the republican party. How did it come to be that Big Brother concluded that there was a free speech-exclusion zone throughout the city? And when did pre-emptive suppression of free speech become an American Value?
Jackson Browne, recently ripped off by the McBush campaign, is damn prescient here (next track on Lives in the Balance is also ever-so-cogent: "this world is long on hunger, this world is short on joy, this world is not your toy):
As if I really didn't understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you
-clip-
And so this Minnesota convention was even more interesting than the last. With caveat that Obama's speech, of the top four, was far and away the most inspiring, in line with the goals of our founders as expressed in our vital documents such as the Constitution, not to mention on-topic.
I have a pot-pourri of posts to share here, in the interest of continuing consideration of the critical issues that I think are at the heart of this election. I'm passing on extracts, at times painfully shortened (a dutiful patriot would follow the links!). I can't think of a better way to start than Mr. Keillor, who titles his insightful on-site article "Who wants to see Sarah Palin as the next president":
The Republicans are meeting down the hill from my house, helicopters are pounding the air, and there are more suits on the streets and big black SUVs and a brownish cloud venting from the hockey arena where the convention is assembled. A large moment for little old St. Paul, which is more accustomed to visitations by conventions of morticians and foundation garment salesmen and the Sons of the Desert, and so we are thrilled. It makes no difference that the city is Democratic. What matters is that, for a few days, TV will show a few pictures of the big bend in the Mississippi, the limestone bluffs, the capitol and cathedral, and a tree-shaded avenue or two, and some of the world will know that we exist.
Too bad that the Current Occupant and Mr. Cheney canceled their St. Paul appearances so they could focus on hurricane-threatened New Orleans and lend their expertise to rescue operations. As it turned out, they weren't needed, which has been generally true for a long time. Their reporting for duty now only served to remind everyone of what happened three years ago. And Mr. McCain, as of this writing, seemed torn between coming to St. Paul to address the convention and comforting hurricane victims in Mississippi, if any could be found.
Meanwhile, he posed a stark question for voters to ponder: How much would you like to see Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, as the next president of the United States? And what does the question say about Mr. McCain's love of the country that she might suddenly need to lead? No need to discuss these things at length, really. The gentleman played his card, a two of hearts. Make of it what you will.
The challenge for Republicans is how to change the subject from the dismal story of Republican triumph the past eight years and get voters to focus on, say, the old man's war record or Mrs. Palin's perkiness or the oddity of the skinny guy's last name. If they can succeed there, they can win this thing.
-clip-
That seems to me frighteningly close to right. McSame/Bush/Shame promised one hell of a lot, but it was all in total contradiction to more or less everything he has recently done and professed. He apparently has not even come around to identifying anything in the way of even vague schemes by which he might pretend to be different from the Sluggos and Stooges who have with his full support taken civilization back several centuries. Never mind anything specific in the way of actual actions or programs to implement even one of the goals he mentioned. It would be complete foolishness to simply invest trust in a politician who is so totally shallow. It's hard to resist the impression that he's lying to us (and ever-so-cocky he will get away with it). It's all platitudes, interestingly in most cases regarding issues his party and votes have raped and pillaged us over for the last eight years. We know where he has been, namely a pretend-maverick with no actual follow-through twin for Bush.
I believe John Seery just about has it pegged, namely Palin as the epitomy of Ugly Americanism (she does indeed seem to more or less define UA, for anyone who has any concern at all about how we are perceived beyond our own myopic small-minded boundaries):
I know, I know: Sarah Palin is receiving rosy plaudits for her speech last night. She is being heralded as the savior of the GOP, someone with enough moxie to sustain the party's unholy alliance between the oil plutocrats and the oily preachocrats.
Many pundits in reviewing her polished performance claim to see an unflappable and gung-ho winner on stage. My honest-to-goodness visceral reaction was quite otherwise. What I saw on that stage was the personification of small-minded smugness, an utter lack of humility, a kind of self-righteous entitlement based on little more than puffed-up narrowness. She struck me not as plucky but, rather, as stunningly immodest--to the point of arrogance. Some people are arrogant and maybe deserve to be. They know it, and flaunt it, while everyone else thinks they are jerks. But there's another kind of arrogance, perhaps harder to spot at first, an arrogance that apparently doesn't even recognize itself as such, a sanctified, self-satisfied presumptuousness that flows from sheer naïveté about oneself and the world and manifests itself in giddy ambition.
-clip-
But there's no denying that the D-for-dumb party continues to try to shoot foot if only they remembered where said foot was. Inept is their game. Barack, this is where you as organizer are supposed to come in! Dan Conley here:
For all the loose talk about sexism this week, the single most sexist act of this past bizarre week in American political life is the Democratic Party's non-response to Sarah Palin. Trying not to be "harsh" or "turn off female voters", they've decided to give her a pass and leave everything to the media.
The media, being the beaten down dogs that they are, immediately dropped their fully credible and necessary "who is she?" narrative the minute Palin stopped reading the teleprompter and didn't run crying from the podium. Oh my God, she's a politician and can read a speech! How wrong we've been.
Of course she can read an effective speech. To think otherwise was naive and sexist. But again, I can't blame the media for switching off their Palin narrative at the drop of a snide slam, it's not their job to bring the GOP Vice Presidential nominee down to size. It's the Democrats' job and they are failing miserably.
You don't have to attack the Palin experience or her family to make a strong case against her. This is a former mayor who tried to get a librarian fired because she wouldn't ban books. This lends credibility to the claim that she abused her power as Governor to get her brother-in-law fired and when the Public Safety Commissioner wouldn't obliged, she fired him.
She's taken no stands on any foreign policy issue -- other than to call the Iraq War "God's work." And on most domestic issues, she's stayed under the radar. Democrats should be out there every day demanding that McCain remove the tape from her mouth and put her on Meet the Press. Of course now that the press has been forced to carry all the water, the campaign has a credible reason why she'll choose to stay away and will instead deliver last night's speech hundreds more times over the next 60 days.
-clip-
Indeed! Conceding SP any cloak of sanctity from questioning is absolutely foolish and unpatriotic. This is a person who might actually have world-governing power invested in her some day (if inanity, superficiality, and a general sense of entitlement are now mainstream "values," oh preserve us!). Get her preacher and husband out here and give them the regular treatment. There is absolutely no excuse for her and the republican party to claim she is beyond the scathing and possibly-insulting and intrusive investigation to which the Obamas (not to mention Clintons and Edwards) have been routinely subjected. And get on with that troopergate cooperation, you who are so self-proclaimed to be high-minded!
Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, notes some very illustrative but disturbing parallels (much more of interest at link):
Enormously gratifying to see how many bloggers have found my book NIXONLAND illuminating of Sara Palin's speech last night, and of the Republicans' convention narrative generally. It really is textbook: Rudy Giuliani braying how Sara doesn't wear a mink coat, she wears a respectable Republican cloth parka; Sara herself, with a genial fury that frankly recalled for me Ronald Reagan at his most effective, pulling out all the stops for the pity-party strategy I describe in the book thusly:
[ed: howzabout more on distaff McBush convention wardrobe, with rumored value in the hundreds of thousands]
[you] jab at a bunch of bastards who were piling on, kicking a man when he was down, a regular guy, just because they could do it and he couldn't fight back.... you inspire a strange sort of protective love among voters whose wounds of resentment grow alongside your performance of being wounded. Your enemies appear to die of their own hand, never of your own. Which makes you stronger.It was, even more—Sara's the Veep pick, after all—Spiro Agnew: a whimpering foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order.... The troglodylic leftists who dominate Congress...work themselves into a lather over an alleged shortage of nutriments in a child's box of Wheaties." They "cannot get exercised over that same child's constant exposure to a flood of hard-core pornography that could warp his moral outlook for a lifetime."
I watched the speech couch-bound and spellbound, at the home of a tall and taciturn prominent St. Paul radio personality, his gracious wife, and a staffer from a liberal magazine. I found that watching the speech with fellow liberals turned out to be more useful to me than watching it in the hall, for reasons I hope to explain later. I scribbled the most salient lines madly in my Moleskin. Forthwith, an annotation:
It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves. With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost - there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war. But the pollsters and pundits overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off. They overlooked the caliber of the man himself - the determination, resolve, and sheer guts of Senator John McCain. The voters knew better.
And so, in the the lingering afterglow of a staggeringly intense standing ovation, the keynote is struck: the media hates John McCain. That is because the media hates victory. The media, by association, also hates you. John McCain will protect you from them.
Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge. And children with special needs inspire a special love. To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.Richard Nixon always pulled out stories of cute children and animals at crucial moments. Trig, passed from hand to hand between Palins and McCains with the rhythmic regularity of a Bob Fosse routine, is Sarah Palin's Checkers: attack me, and you're really attacking him.
(A visual note: Liberty Bell projected in the background, then the Washington Monument.)
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Getting back to McBush/Same. Tristero, posting at Hullabaloo, does yeo-work in demonstrating just what a fearful sort McSame/Bush is. It's incontrovertible:
St. John McCain is always eager to remind us of prehistoric times, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and he actually demonstrated real courage, But he doesn't want to talk about today. And that's for good reason.
Today, John McCain is afraid of his own shadow. McCain is so afraid, there is hardly anything he cares to do or talk about except the past:
McCain's afraid to be seen on the same stage as George W. Bush.
McCain's afraid to discuss his secret (translated: non-existent) plans to get bin Laden.
McCain's afraid to discuss the vetting of his vice-presidential candidate.
McCain's afraid to have his vice-presidential candidate talk to the press; she's been shipped back to Alaska. [UPDATE]
McCain's afraid to discuss his reckless support of Bush/Iraq, which dates to Sept 12, 2001.
McCain's afraid to discuss plans to withdraw from Iraq in our lifetimes.
McCain's afraid to discuss a serious energy policy.
McCain's afraid to discuss a workable tax plan.
McCain's so afraid of hard work, he admits he's never learned even the basics of economics.
McCain's so afraid of his party they dictated to him he couldn't run with the candidate he wanted.
McCains's afraid to discuss even the vaguest details of his plans for this country because he hasn't any.
McCain's even afraid to discuss why he refuses to support scholarships for vets.
And McCain's so afraid of change he hasn't learned to use a computer and can't even log on to his own website.
But oh! How eager McCain is to talk about the past! Those glorious days when he actually had a spine. McCain revels in those days and well he should. It makes us forget how much of a compromised, philandering, conformist he's been ever since. A man so spineless, he voted with George W. Bush, by his own admission, 90% of the time.
The John McCain of 2008 is a doddering, fearful, ignorant goat. And he's been one for a very, very loooooooooooooooooong time.
That's far more polite than I could have been. McBush has become truly evil, and that needs to be said loud and clear. Whether it is his desperate grasping for power, incipient dementia, or something even more demonical, this is not something we can afford to have pretending to direct our country.
Even Bob Herbert, muted as he can be through the sorry corporate NY Times filter has this:
If there was one pre-eminent characteristic of the Republican convention this week, it was the quality of deception. Words completely lost their meaning. Reality was turned upside down.
From the faux populist gibberish mouthed by speaker after speaker, you would never have known that the Republicans have been in power over the past several years and used that titanic power to lead the country to its present sorry state.
In his acceptance speech on Thursday night, Senator John McCain did his best Sam Cooke imitation ("A Change is Gonna Come") and vowed to put the country "back on the road to prosperity and peace."
Mr. McCain spoke at the end of a day in which stock market indexes plunged. The next morning the Labor Department gave us the grim news that another 84,000 jobs had been lost in August, and that the official unemployment rate had climbed to 6.1 percent - the highest in five years.
If there were any good ideas at this convention of mostly rich and mostly right-wing delegates about how to haul the country out of this mess that the G.O.P. has gotten it into, they were kept well hidden. Perhaps they were tucked away behind the more prominently displayed creationism and "just-say-no to global warming" documents.
It stretches the mind almost to the breaking point to think of John McCain as an agent of substantive change. He once believed that Phil Gramm was the most qualified person in the United States to be president. And he now believes that Sarah Palin is the most qualified to be vice president.
That is not the fault of Mr. Gramm or Ms. Palin. But it sure tells us a lot about the judgment of John McCain.
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posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:40 PM
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